The story of Charlie, the lovable dog, in 'Beauty in the Beast' tugs at your heartstrings as we read about how he interacts with his two-legged friends. A best-selling author may see another side of his character when he reads 'Jonboy's Complaint'. Or read about Al, the uncomplicated redneck, who tackles everyday events with a touch of humour. These creative stories are an eclectic mix of themes which include memoir, humor, horror, redneck ramblings and historical fiction. Those who want a quick read will get a chuckle, a fright, or a lesson from these delightful short stories. Makes you laugh, makes you cry. Some may have dark undertones. The stories are written in a variety of styles and themes and some have an unexpected twist.A great gift for Christmas.
The stories begin with Noah, in 'To the End of Love'. He meets a stranger in Central Park, New York, who gives him his view on current and past events. 'Les Jouets' tells the tragic story of a historical character who suffered at the hands of royalty and is today immortalized in a popular Children's story. Homelessness and sudden unemployment are portrayed in 'No Place Like Home'. The short stories have been written in a variety of styles and themes. A collection of witty, entertaining and informative tales with unexpected twists. Some will make you laugh and some will make you cry. These short reads will be sure to delight readers who enjoy a diverse selection of topics and subjects.A great gift to someone for Christmas.
Peter Pan By J. M. Barrie Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie. A mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the island of Neverland as the leader of the Lost Boys, interacting with fairies, pirates, mermaids, Native Americans, and occasionally ordinary children from the world outside Neverland. J. M. Barrie first used Peter Pan as a character in a section of The Little White Bird (1902), an adult novel where he appears as a seven-day old baby in the chapter entitled Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Following the success of the 1904 play, Barrie's publishers, Hodder and Stoughton, extracted chapters 13
Designed specifically for students of literature and bibliophiles. We are pleased to bring you the complete and unabridged text of this classic book. Because this is the original work by the author, you may find slight differences in spellings and punctuation than those you
EXTRACT: A moment before the curtain rises, the Hon. Ernest Woolley drives up to the door of Loam House in Mayfair. There is a happy smile on his pleasant, insignificant face, and this presumably means that he is thinking of himself. He is too busy over nothing, this man about town, to be always thinking of himself, but, on the other hand, he almost never thinks of any other person. Probably Ernest's great moment is when he wakes of a morning and realises that he really is Ernest, for we must all wish to be that which is our ideal. We can conceive him springing out of bed light-heartedly and waiting for his man to do the rest. He is dressed in excellent taste, with just the little bit more which shows that he is not without a sense of humour: the dandiacal are often saved by carrying a smile at the whole thing in their spats, let us say. Ernest left Cambridge the other day, a member of The Athenaeum (which he would be sorry to have you confound with a club in London of the same name). He is a bachelor, but not of arts, no mean epigrammatist (as you shall see), and a favourite of the ladies. He is almost a celebrity in restaurants, where he dines frequently, returning to sup; and during this last year he has probably paid as much in them for the privilege of handing his hat to an attendant as the rent of a working-man's flat. He complains brightly that he is hard up, and that if somebody or other at Westminster does not look out the country will go to the dogs. He is no fool. He has the shrewdness to float with the current because it is a labour-saving process, but he has sufficient pluck to fight, if fight he must (a brief contest, for he would soon be toppled over). He has a light nature, which would enable him to bob up cheerily in new conditions and return unaltered to the old ones. His selfishness is his most endearing quality. If he has his way he will spend his life like a cat in pushing his betters out of the soft places, and until he is old he will be fondled in the process. Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 - 19 June 1937) was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland but moved to London, where he wrote a number of successful novels and plays. There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys, who inspired him to write about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens (included in The Little White Bird), then to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a "fairy play" about an ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. Although he continued to write successfully, Peter Pan overshadowed his other work, and is credited with popularising the then-uncommon name Wendy. Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents. Barrie was made a baronet by George V on 14 June 1913, and a member of the Order of Merit in the 1922 New Year Honours. Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, which continues to benefit from them.
EXTRACT: One would like to peep covertly into Amy's diary (octavo, with the word 'Amy' in gold letters wandering across the soft brown leather covers, as if it was a long word and, in Amy's opinion, rather a dear). To take such a liberty, and allow the reader to look over our shoulders, as they often invite you to do in novels (which, however, are much more coquettish things than plays) would be very helpful to us; we should learn at once what sort of girl Amy is, and why to-day finds her washing her hair. We should also get proof or otherwise, that we are interpreting her aright; for it is our desire not to record our feelings about Amy, but merely Amy's feelings about herself; not to tell what we think happened, but what Amy thought happened. The book, to be sure, is padlocked, but we happen to know where it is kept. (In the lower drawer of that hand-painted escritoire.) Sometimes in the night Amy, waking up, wonders whether she did lock her diary, and steals downstairs in white to make sure. On these occasions she undoubtedly lingers among the pages, re-reading the peculiarly delightful bit she wrote yesterday; so we could peep over her shoulder, while the reader peeps over ours. Then why don't we do it? Is it because this would be a form of eavesdropping, and that we cannot be sure our hands are clean enough to turn the pages of a young girl's thoughts? It cannot be that, because the novelists do it. It is because in a play we must tell nothing that is not revealed by the spoken words; you must find out all you want to know from them; there is no weather even in plays nowadays except in melodrama; the novelist can have sixteen chapters about the hero's grandparents, but we cannot even say he had any unless he says it himself. There can be no rummaging in the past for us to show what sort of people our characters are; we are allowed only to present them as they toe the mark; then the handkerchief falls, and off they go. James Matthew Barrie, better known under the signature of J. M. Barrie (Kirriemuir, May 9, 1860 - London, 19 June 1937), 1st Baronet, is a writer and Scottish playwright, famous for creating the character of Peter Pan. During his years of study in Glasgow, James Barrie makes friends (Stuart Gordon, Welwood Anderson), he discovers Shakespeare and the theater and up a troupe of amateurs with his comrades. He entered the University of Edinburgh in 1878, which showed four years later with a Master of Arts (MA). He worked as a reporter for the Journal of Nottingham there he contracted the habit of smoking the pipe that exalt in My Lady Nicotine in 1890. He moved to London in his account in 1885 and collaborates with various newspapers. He noted in 1889 by the publication of a collection of chronicles, The Eleven of Edinburgh. In 1890 Barrie made a small room, The Phantom of Ibsen, who ridicules the Norwegian playwright popular on the London stage. His novel, The little minister some success in 1891 and in 1892 our young author Conan Doyle met with whom he becomes friends. His play, A professor's love story, also met with great success and in 1894 he married the same year, the actress Mary Ansell, but the marriage will fail. Childless, the couple divorced in 1909 at the request of the wife (who took a lover) and against the will of the writer who opposes separation. J. M. Barrie was a menu and slender man, small. It has sometimes emphasized his almost childlike approach (like his hero Peter who will not grow). It is assumed that this unusual character was asexual and it was one of the reasons for divorce (see Peter Pan Syndrome). In 1897, in Kensington Park, James Barrie meets the Llewelyn Davies children (George, Jack and Peter) for which he imagines the adventures of Peter Pan. Our author binds to parents, Sylvia, daughter of writer George du Maurier, and Arthur, respected lawyer.
EXTRACT: THE SCHOOLHOUSE Early this morning I opened a window in my schoolhouse in the glen of Quharity, awakened by the shivering of a starving sparrow against the frosted glass. As the snowy sash creaked in my hand, he made off to the water-spout that suspends its "tangles" of ice over a gaping tank, and, rebounding from that, with a quiver of his little black breast, bobbed through the network of wire and joined a few of his fellows in a forlorn hop round the henhouse in search of food. Two days ago my hilarious bantam-cock, saucy to the last, my cheeriest companion, was found frozen in his own water-trough, the corn-saucer in three pieces by his side. Since then I have taken the hens into the house. At meal-times they litter the hearth with each other's feathers; but for the most part they give little trouble, roosting on the rafters of the low-roofed kitchen among staves and fishing-rods. Another white blanket has been spread upon the glen since I looked out last night; for over the same wilderness of snow that has met my gaze for a week, I see the steading of Waster Lunny sunk deeper into the waste. The schoolhouse, I suppose, serves similarly as a snowmark for the people at the farm. Unless that is Waster Lunny's grieve foddering the cattle in the snow, not a living thing is visible. The ghostlike hills that pen in the glen have ceased to echo to the sharp crack of the sportsman's gun (so clear in the frosty air as to be a warning to every rabbit and partridge in the valley); and only giant Catlaw shows here and there a black ridge, rearing its head at the entrance to the glen and struggling ineffectually to cast off his shroud. Most wintry sign of all, I think as I close the window hastily, is the open farm-stile, its poles lying embedded in the snow where they were last flung by Waster Lunny's herd. Through the still air comes from a distance a vibration as of a tuning-fork: a robin, perhaps, alighting on the wire of a broken fence.... James Matthew Barrie, better known under the signature of J. M. Barrie (Kirriemuir, May 9, 1860 - London, 19 June 1937), 1st Baronet, is a writer and Scottish playwright, famous for creating the character of Peter Pan. During his years of study in Glasgow, James Barrie makes friends (Stuart Gordon, Welwood Anderson), he discovers Shakespeare and the theater and up a troupe of amateurs with his comrades. He entered the University of Edinburgh in 1878, which showed four years later with a Master of Arts (MA). He worked as a reporter for the Journal of Nottingham there he contracted the habit of smoking the pipe that exalt in My Lady Nicotine in 1890. He moved to London in his account in 1885 and collaborates with various newspapers. He noted in 1889 by the publication of a collection of chronicles, The Eleven of Edinburgh. In 1890 Barrie made a small room, The Phantom of Ibsen, who ridicules the Norwegian playwright popular on the London stage. His novel, The little minister some success in 1891 and in 1892 our young author Conan Doyle met with whom he becomes friends. His play, A professor's love story, also met with great success and in 1894 he married the same year, the actress Mary Ansell, but the marriage will fail. Childless, the couple divorced in 1909 at the request of the wife (who took a lover) and against the will of the writer who opposes separation. J. M. Barrie was a menu and slender man, small. It has sometimes emphasized his almost childlike approach (like his hero Peter who will not grow). It is assumed that this unusual character was asexual and it was one of the reasons for divorce (see Peter Pan Syndrome). In 1897, in Kensington Park, James Barrie meets the Llewelyn Davies children (George, Jack and Peter) for which he imagines the adventures of Peter Pan. Our author binds to parents, Sylvia, daughter of writer George du Maurier, and Arthur, respected lawyer.
Extract: I THE GRAND TOUR OF THE GARDENS David You must see for yourselves that it will be difficult to follow Peter Pan's adventures unless you are familiar with the Kensington Gardens. They are in London, where the King lives, and I used to take David there nearly every day unless he was looking decidedly flushed. No child has ever been in the whole of the Gardens, because it is so soon time to turn back. The reason it is soon time to turn back is that, if you are as small as David, you sleep from twelve to one. If your mother was not so sure that you sleep from twelve to one, you could most likely see the whole of them. Nurse The Gardens are bounded on one side by a never-ending line of omnibuses, over which your nurse has such authority that if she holds up her finger to any one of them it stops immediately. She then crosses with you in safety to the other side. There are more gates to the Gardens than one gate, but that is the one you go in at, and before you go in you speak to the lady with the balloons, who sits just outside. This is as near to being inside as she may venture, because, if she were to let go her hold of the railings for one moment, the balloons would lift her up, and she would be flown away. She sits very squat, for the balloons are always tugging at her, and the strain has given her quite a red face. Once she was a new one, because the old one had let go, and David was very sorry for the old one, but as she did let go, he wished he had been there to see.
Extract: I. David and I Set Forth Upon a Journey Sometimes the little boy who calls me father brings me an invitation from his mother: "I shall be so pleased if you will come and see me," and I always reply in some such words as these: "Dear madam, I decline." And if David asks why I decline, I explain that it is because I have no desire to meet the woman. "Come this time, father," he urged lately, "for it is her birthday, and she is twenty-six," which is so great an age to David, that I think he fears she cannot last much longer. "Twenty-six, is she, David?" I replied. "Tell her I said she looks more." I had my delicious dream that night. I dreamt that I too was twenty-six, which was a long time ago, and that I took train to a place called my home, whose whereabouts I see not in my waking hours, and when I alighted at the station a dear lost love was waiting for me, and we went away together. She met me in no ecstasy of emotion, nor was I surprised to find her there; it was as if we had been married for years and parted for a day. I like to think that I gave her some of the things to carry. Were I to tell my delightful dream to David's mother, to whom I have never in my life addressed one word, she would droop her head and raise it bravely, to imply that I make her very sad but very proud, and she would be wishful to lend me her absurd little pocket handkerchief. And then, had I the heart, I might make a disclosure that would startle her, for it is not the face of David's mother that I see in my dreams. James Matthew Barrie, better known under the signature of J. M. Barrie (Kirriemuir, May 9, 1860 - London, 19 June 1937), 1st Baronet, is a writer and Scottish playwright, famous for creating the character of Peter Pan. During his years of study in Glasgow, James Barrie makes friends (Stuart Gordon, Welwood Anderson), he discovers Shakespeare and the theater and up a troupe of amateurs with his comrades. He entered the University of Edinburgh in 1878, which showed four years later with a Master of Arts (MA). He worked as a reporter for the Journal of Nottingham there he contracted the habit of smoking the pipe that exalt in My Lady Nicotine in 1890. He moved to London in his account in 1885 and collaborates with various newspapers. He noted in 1889 by the publication of a collection of chronicles, The Eleven of Edinburgh. In 1890 Barrie made a small room, The Phantom of Ibsen, who ridicules the Norwegian playwright popular on the London stage. His novel, The little minister some success in 1891 and in 1892 our young author Conan Doyle met with whom he becomes friends. His play, A professor's love story, also met with great success and in 1894 he married the same year, the actress Mary Ansell, but the marriage will fail. Childless, the couple divorced in 1909 at the request of the wife (who took a lover) and against the will of the writer who opposes separation. J. M. Barrie was a menu and slender man, small. It has sometimes emphasized his almost childlike approach (like his hero Peter who will not grow). It is assumed that this unusual character was asexual and it was one of the reasons for divorce (see Peter Pan Syndrome). In 1897, in Kensington Park, James Barrie meets the Llewelyn Davies children (George, Jack and Peter) for which he imagines the adventures of Peter Pan. Our author binds to parents, Sylvia, daughter of writer George du Maurier, and Arthur, respected lawyer.
Barrie, Sir James Mathew (1860-1937) - Scottish novelist and playwright, best known for his whimsical tales of fantasy. Peter Pan (1904) - Barrie's most famous work is a fantasy about the Darling children - Wendy, Michael, and John - and Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up. Peter teaches the Darlings to fly and takes them to Neverland where they meet the lost boys, encounter Indians, and battle with Captain Hook and his Pirates in this classic children's adventure tale.
Barrie, Sir James Mathew (1860-1937) - Scottish novelist and playwright, best known for his whimsical tales of fantasy. Peter Pan (1904) - Barrie's most famous work is a fantasy about the Darling children - Wendy, Michael, and John - and Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up. Peter teaches the Darlings to fly and takes them to Neverland where they meet the lost boys, encounter Indians, and battle with Captain Hook and his Pirates in this classic children's adventure tale.
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens: an origin story where the infant Peter flies away from his home, takes up residence in Kensington Gardens and makes friends with the fairies. It is a "book-within-a-book" that was first published in Barrie's The Little White Bird in 1902. J.M. Barrie (1860-1937) was the Scottish novelist and playwright best known for the creation of Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up on Neverland. Peter Pan is one of the most popular children's characters ever and remains a favorite across the world.
