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Richard Garnett C.B. was born on the 27th February 1835. As an author he wrote several volumes of verse, a book of short stories and several biographies and history books. In 1901, Garnett was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society. Richard Garnett died on the 13th April 1906. He was 71.

Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883 in Prague, then in Bohemia, the eldest of 6, into a middle-class Jewish family. Life for the young Kafka and his passion for literature was often made an ordeal by his over-bearing and domineering entrepreneur of a father. His literary works are few in number but towering in influence. His masterpieces include ‘The Trial’, ‘The Metamorphosis’ as well as a number of short stories which reveal facets of humankind that truthfully could only be born from Kafka’s brain and pen.

Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883 in Prague, then in Bohemia, the eldest of 6, into a middle-class Jewish family. Life for the young Kafka and his passion for literature was often made an ordeal by his over-bearing and domineering entrepreneur of a father. His literary works are few in number but towering in influence. His masterpieces include ‘The Trial’, ‘The Metamorphosis’ as well as a number of short stories which reveal facets of humankind that truthfully could only be born from Kafka’s brain and pen.

Ivan Minchov Vazov was born on the 9th July 1850 (although that date is disputed) in the town of Sopot, in Bulgaria, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. After primary education at the local school he was sent to Kalofer to continue his studies and work as an assistant teacher. He later spent a short time in Plodiv where he began to write poetry. Fascinated by literature he abandoned work as an apprentice to move to Brăila, in Romania, where he lived with exiled revolutionaries and befriended the poet Hristo Botev.

Richard Barham Middleton was born on the 28th October 1882 in Staines, Middlesex. His education was primarily at Cranbrook School in Kent before he began work as a clerk, in 1901, at the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation in London. Middleton moved into rooms in Blackfriars and joined the New Bohemians club where his literary contacts grew. As an author he is most remembered for his short ghost stories.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author? In this volume the once forgotten literary backwaters of Scandinavia, and its hinterland, reveal the storied works of their own literature. Some names are familiar, some decidedly not. But each has literary talents and compelling narratives.

In this volume our classic authors turn their words to the religion of Christianity. It’s a fascinating subject for our authors who can explore faith and belief in ways that we rarely subject ourselves to. Whatever your faith these stories raise questions and that are of interest to us all.

Five short stories about bullying, school camaraderie, and about learning how to relate to others as an only child.

In the sixth part, the business risk buster strikes at a medical clinic. A wealthy developer bought his wife a clinic, but she left him and the clinic soon afterwards. So he hired a managing director under whose management it went from bad to worse. Contents: How to analyse your company from the inside. How to get rid of an incompetent manager. How to hire a more capable manager. How to choose the right investor. Learn from mistakes made by other entrepreneurs.

The human race prides itself on being the most organised of animals. We manage the fate of all other species. All other animals bow to our control or suffer. In diminishing numbers we allow some to live in the wild, but in increasing numbers we domesticate them, and whether they become part of the family, a best friend or wonderfully decorative accessory, we take their compliance for granted.

With classics such as ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ Robert Browning’s status as one of the great Victorian poets will always be secure in popular culture, while for the more literary he is considered a master of dramatic verse and dramatic monologues. It is interesting to note that his career bloomed late. Indeed, it was only after the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1861 and his return to England from their life in Italy that his work came into wider acceptance and critical acclaim.

Anton Chekhov is amongst the most vaunted of authors. His tales can take a small fragment of a person’s life and turn it into a narrative of unrivalled and compelling power. This volume perfectly illustrates Chekhov and his miniature masterpieces.

In this volume our classic authors conjure up all sorts of damnations and destructions in literary assaults testing our will to survive and our ingenuity to overcome situations where the outlook is bleak at best and the total extinction of us at worse.

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was born on 21st August in Oryol, Russia, to a middle-class family of Polish, Ukranian and Finnish ancestry. In 1898 his first short story ‘Bargamot and Garaska’, published in the ‘Kurier’ newspaper, caught the attention and friendship of Maxim Gorky. Andreyev now discarded any other career path apart from that of author. His classic story ‘Lazarus’ brilliantly tells the story of Christ’s disciple, forced to wander the earth for all time; it is both chilling and heart-breaking in its Russian setting.

Hector Hugh Munro, more familiarly known by his pen-name ‘Saki’, was born in what was then Akyab in British Burma on 18th December 1870. His father was an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police, and his mother the daughter of a Rear Admiral. After a stint working in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police, Saki decided to move to London to make a living as a writer. Initially he wrote as a journalist for a number of newspapers and magazines before attempting an historical study, ‘The Rise of the Russian Empire’, whose real value lay in directing him to writing short stories instead.

Our fear of the Devil, whatever his temptations and rewards, is amplified by the thought of eternal damnation in his hell house service. In this volume our authors are all from Europe and see the Devil in ways that we recognise and yet are culturally distinct to the European mainland.

Winifred Holtby was born on 23rd June 1898 to a prosperous farming family in the village of Rudston in Yorkshire. Her early novels met with only moderate success but as a journalist she was both prolific and increasingly well-known. Her articles graced more than 20 newspapers and magazines, including the Manchester Guardian newspaper.

Despite William Shakespeare being regarded as the most significant figure in the Western literary canon, relatively little is known about his early life and his later ‘lost years’. Even the exact date of his birth is uncertain. 23rd April generally accepted to be the date of his birth, could be a scholarly mistake amplified by the coincidence of it also being the date of his death. His iconic status now spans global literature and stems directly from the magnitude of his plays, both tragedies and comedies, and his poetry which is often cited as some of the greatest love poetry ever written.

Móric Jókay de Ásva was born on the 18th February 1825 in Komárom, then in the Kingdom of Hungary but now part of Slovakia. In 1848 he married the actress, Róza Laborfalvi. That same year Europe was awash with revolutions and Jókai, a moderate Liberal, enthusiastically supported the nationalist cause and its decision to depose the Habsburg dynasty. The attempt failed. He was now classified as a political suspect and threw himself into his literary career, writing dozens of novels, many of them masterpieces, stories, essays and the like. In total he wrote several hundred volumes.

Richard Garnett C.B. was born on the 27th February 1835. Educated in Bloomsbury he then joined the nearby British Museum as an assistant librarian in 1851, shortly after his father’s death. As an author he wrote several volumes of verse, a book of short stories and several biographies and history books.