Showing results by author "Mentor New York" in All Categories

Jasper Derry was on a mission. He had left the northern wilderness a few years earlier when he had worked for the Hudson's Bay Company, but in doing so he had also left some unfinished business behind. Now he is on his quest to complete those affairs. We travel with Jasper and his two companions through the rugged, desolate region, and while doing so, we learn a great deal of just how wild and untamed the wilderness was in the mid-19th century. This is an adventure, a series of learning experiences, and a lesson in bonding to ensure survival away in the wilderness. - Summary by Roger Melin

This delightful story is the tale of young Balser Brent, who has a knack for running into bears. Usually the bears come out of the interaction worse than the feisty and brave Balser. A great story for both boys and girls who enjoy adventure and excitement. (Summary by Tanica)

Britten's operas are firmly established in the international repertoire: according to Operabase, they are performed worldwide more than those of any other composer born in the 20th century, and only Puccini and Richard Strauss come ahead of him if the list is extended to all operas composed after 1900. Britten went to various sources for his stories from the Bible to Japanese noh plays. This is a collection of twelve of the source stories. All but one are the original texts; the one exception is A Midsummer Night’s Dream which the reader took from Charles Lamb’s telling of the story. Some ...

The Moberly–Jourdain incident was an event that occurred on 10 August 1901 in the gardens of the Petit Trianon, involving two female academics, Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain. The women were both from educated backgrounds. During a trip to Versailles, they visited the Petit Trianon, a small château in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles, where they allegedly experienced a time slip, and saw Marie Antoinette as well as other people of the same period. After researching the history of the palace, and comparing notes of their experience, they published their work in a book ...

Cyril Gordon, a young and handsome secret service agent is running from pursuers who desperately want the information he holds. He hides out from them in a church, and then finds himself married to a woman he’s never seen before. A sweet and sometimes, funny, romance, with several exciting chases.

This romantic comedy stars a young American girl named Sally, who inherits a considerable fortune and finds her life turned upside down. The typically Wodehouseian cast includes Sally's ambitious brother, an assortment of theater people, a pair of English cousins, and, of course, an Uncle. It's jolly good fun! (Summary by Kara and Wikipedia)

A story of two sets of lovers and the development of their relationships, set in rural France in the mid 19th century. - Summary by PeterTucker

The Aeneid is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. The first six of the poem’s twelve books tell the story of Aeneas’ wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem’s second half treats the Trojans’ ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed. The poem was commissioned from Virgil by the Emperor Augustus to glorify Rome. Several critics think that the hero Aeneas’ abandonment of ...

What were the lower Mississippi River, Gulf Coast regions, and Appalachians of North America like in the earliest colonial days? Full of untamed forests, wild animals, nuts, berries, and Indians. Chateaubriand spent many years exploring the area, and this early (somewhat autobiographical) novella was inspired by his years spent with various Indian tribes, (described in his Introduction--included after the story), primarily the Natchez. Amongst these natives, as the story goes, was a blind old patriarch named Chactas, revered for his wisdom and knowledge of the affairs of life, including many ...

Poems from Robert Graves published by the Augustan Books of Poetry. - Summary by KevinS

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin is the autobiography of the British naturalist Charles Darwin which was published in 1887, five years after his death.Darwin wrote the book, which he entitled Recollections of the Development of my Mind and Character, for his family. He states that he started writing it on about May 28, 1876 and had finished it by August 3.The book was edited by Charles Darwin's son Francis Darwin, who removed several passages about Darwin's critical views of God and Christianity (see Charles Darwin's views on religion). It was published in London by John Murray as part of ...

Rodin has pronounced Rilke's essay the supreme interpretation of his work. (From the translators’ Preface) Auguste Rodin, 1840-1917, was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition, although he was never accepted into Paris's foremost school of art. Sculpturally, Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface in clay. … Rodin… modeled the human ...

Nominally an autobiography, Biographia Literaria ranges widely across the realms of philosophy, poetry and memoir, in Coleridge's trademark discursive style, providing a living glimpse of the great talker, the man who could hold his contemporaries in thrall for hours with his dazzling conversation, and who was famously described as the last man "to have read everything". Summary by Nicole Lee.

Allan Quatermain was the quintessential Victorian English gentleman cum African big-game hunter. In this book, the second in the series, Quaterman and his two good friends from KSM have tired of their dull and unfulfilling lives in England, and decide to search for the truth of an old tale about the existence of an isolated white kingdom deep in darkest Africa. Their journey and subsequent adventures are sure to satisfy those who enjoy tales of dangerous quests and heroic just-in-time derring-do. Allan Quatermain appears in some 15 to 18 stories or books by H. Rider Haggard. (The number varies...

John Dryden published Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem in 1681. It is an elaborate historical allegory using the political situation faced by King David (2 Samuel 14-18) to mirror that faced by Charles II. Each monarch had a son whom a high-ranking minister attempted to use against him. James Scott, first Duke of Monmouth, Charles II's illegitimate son, was detected planning a rebellion late in 1681, supposedly instigated by the Earl of Shaftesbury, who was tried for high treason, and it is believed that Dryden wrote the poem in an effort to sway the jury in his trial. The fates of both Absalom ...

An ordinary village girl's plans for the future with her long-standing beau are threatened when he is seen to be an attractive prospect by a local noble family Trollope's novella works through the consequences with typical affection and sensitivity. - Summary by Anthony Ogus

A passionate exponent of Russian Existentialism, Lev Shestov is little known in the English-speaking world but had an extensive influence on philosophy and literature in the first half of the 20th century, his influence imprinting thinkers and writers as diverse as D. H. Lawrence, Nicholas Berdyaev, Georges Bataille, and Edmund Husserl. Driven out of Russia by the Bolshevik Revolution, Shestov continued to live, study, and write in Paris, where he died in 1955. - Summary by Expatriate

In 1837, the Danish Royal Society of Sciences offered a prize to any essayist who could satisfactorily answer the question, "Is the fountain and basis of Morals to be sought for in an idea of morality which lies directly in the consciousness (or conscience), and in the analysis of the other leading ethical conceptions which arise from it? Or is it to be found in some other source of knowledge?" The Basis of Morality is the essay submitted in 1840 by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. In it, he first mercilessly deconstructs the prevailing Western theory of morality as championed by ...

Just about every confidence gag had been tried on old Vachti, except the Elixir of Youth. Only this was different—Professor Barr had a unique pitch on it, but Buck had the real goods! (Summary by Paul Hampton)

Twenty-four short stories by famous and not-so-famous British authors. (Summary by David Wales) Note: A shortened section 21 was replaced on Dec 30, 2014 with the full text.