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Onions wrote several collections of ghost stories, of which the best known is Widdershins (1911). It includes the novella The Beckoning Fair One, widely regarded as one of the best in the genre of horror fiction, especially psychological horror. On the surface, this is a conventional haunted house story: an unsuccessful writer moves into rooms in an otherwise empty house, in the hope that isolation will help his failing creativity. His sensitivity and imagination are enhanced by his seclusion, but his art, his only friend and his sanity are all destroyed in the process. The story can be read as narrating the gradual possession of the protagonist by a mysterious and possessive feminine spirit, or as a realistic description of a psychotic outbreak culminating in catatonia and murder, told from the sufferer's point of view. The precise description of the slow disintegration of the protagonist's mind is terrifying in either case. Another theme, shared with others of Onions' stories, is a connection between creativity and insanity; in this view, the artist is in danger of withdrawing from the world altogether and losing himself in his cr...

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Horror/Ghost stories

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In this popular American book from the 1920s, accomplished public speaker and self-help charlatan Elsie Lincoln Benedict outlines her pseudo-scientific system of Human Analysis. She proposes that, within the human race, five sub-types have developed through evolutionary processes, each with its own distinct character traits and corresponding outward appearance. She offers to teach the reader how to recognise these five types of people and understand their innate differences. Her ideas have never been taken seriously by the scientific community, but this book is considered a classic within its genre and remains in print today. Summary by Carl Manchester....

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Psychology, Instruction

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A Sicilian Romance is a Gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe. It was her second published work, and was first published anonymously in 1790. The plot concerns the turbulent history of the fallen aristocrats of the house of Mazzini, on the northern shore of Sicily, as related by a tourist who becomes intrigued by the stories of a monk he meets in the ruins of their doomed castle.The introduction to the 'Worlds Classics' edition notes that in this novel Ann Radcliffe began to forge the unique mixture of the psychology of terror and poetic description that would make her the great exemplar of the Gothic novel, and the idol of the Romantics. The novel explores the cavernous landscapes and labyrinthine passages of Sicily's castles and convents to reveal the shameful secrets of its all-powerful aristocracy (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Romance, Tragedy, Fiction, Adventure

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In einer Nordseegemeinde taucht vor drohenden Sturmfluten und Deichbrüchen eine gespenstische Gestalt auf dem Deich auf. Der Geist reitet auf seinem Schimmel lautlos in die Fluten um dort unterzugehen. Das gesamte Dorf kennt dieses Zeichen seit über hundert Jahren. Der Erzähler aber nimmt die Gestalt während eines Sturmes wahr, ohne je davor von ihr gehört zu haben. Da der Sturm zunimmt, sucht er Zuflucht in dem Gasthaus des Dorfes. Dort berichtet ihm der Schulmeister das Schicksal Hauke Haiens, des einstigen Deichgrafen, den sein hartes Schicksal zum “Schimmelreiter” machte. Immer wieder unterbrochen von den Geschehnissen in der Wirtsstube vermischt der Lehrer Fakten und Sage und zeigt so, wie die Legende entstand. (Zusammenfassung von Felix)...

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Adventure, Teen/Young adult

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It is quite generally recognized that psychology has remained in the semi-mythological, semi-scholastic period longer than most attempts at scientific formulization. For a long time it has been the spook science per se, and the imagination, now analyzed by M. Ribot in such a masterly manner, has been one of the most persistent, apparently real, though very indefinite, of psychological spooks. Whereas people have been accustomed to speak of the imagination as an entity sui generis , as a lofty something found only in long-haired, wild-eyed geniuses, constituting indeed the center of a cult, our author, Prometheus-like, has brought it down from the heavens, and has clearly shown that imagination is a function of mind common to all men in some degree, and that it is shown in as highly developed form in commercial leaders and practical inventors as in the most bizarre of romantic idealists. The only difference is that the manifestation is not the same. - Albert H. N. Baron, in translator's preface to Essai sur l'imagination créatrice...

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Psychology, Religion, Philosophy

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Dit is het verhaal van Nikolaas Nickleby en zijn zuster Kate die na het sterven van hun vader steun zoeken bij de broer van hun vader. In dit verhaal worden de misstanden van kostscholen aan de kaak gesteld. (Samenvatting door Marcel Coenders)...

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Literature, Psychology, Romance

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Baby's Own Aesop presents the fables as one-stanza limericks, each pictorially pointed by Walter Crane, the noted painter and illustrator. He apprenticed to master wood-engraver, William James Linton, who furnished the draft of the book's poems for Crane to edit. Baby's Own Aesop is available in a beautiful http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SaveBook?bookid=crababy_00150086&lang=English facsimile edition of colored engravings from the International Children's Digital Library, with which your child can read along while listening to the recording. (Summary by Denny Sayers)...

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Children, Animals, Poetry

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Ein verbummelter Student ist ein autobiographisch geprägtes Werk von Gustav Sack (1885-1916), einem heute fast vergessenen, frühexpressionistischen Autor. Es wird das Leben von Erich, dem verbummelten Studenten, erzählt. Neben seinen naturwissenschaftlichen Studien versucht er sich auch an (von Nietzsche beeinflußten) philosophischen Überlegungen über die Natur des Menschen und der Welt. Daran scheitert er. Die erkenntnistheoretischen Hilflosigkeiten Erichs (Gustav Sack) prägen seine Liebesbeziehung mit Loo, der Tochter eines reichen Gutsbesitzers, und sein weiteres Leben. Alles Erleben wird schließlich nur Bestätigung und Gleichnis für die inneren Vorgänge; es ist tragische Notwendigkeit, daß Glück und Dasein schließlich als unwesentlich zerstieben. Das Ergebnis ist ungeheure Einsamkeit (Hans W. Fischer, Herausgeber des erst postum erschienenen Werkes). (Zusammenfassung von Rainer)...

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Fiction, Literature, Philosophy, Romance, Psychology

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volunteers bring you 22 recordings of The Vagabond by Robert Louis Stevenson. This was the Weekly Poetry project for January 22, 2012. The Vagabond appeared in Stevenson's Songs of Travel and Other Verses, which was published after his death. It expresses the love of travel and adventure he always nurtured. Near the end of his life Stevenson emigrated to Samoa and became very involved in local politics, severely criticising the European officials he encountered. He was buried close to his new home, in the land he had come to love. (Summary by Lucy Perry)...

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Nature, Advice, Psychology, Poetry

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Ce n'était pas une petite tâche que de peindre les deux ou trois mille figures saillantes d'une époque, car telle est, en définitif, la somme des types que présente chaque génération et que La Comédie Humaine comportera. Ce nombre de figures, de caractères, cette multitude d'existences exigeaient des cadres, et, qu'on me pardonne cette expression, des galeries. De là, les divisions si naturelles, déjà connues, de mon ouvrage en Scènes de la vie privée, de province, parisienne, politique, militaire et de campagne. Dans ces six livres sont classées toutes les Études de mœurs qui forment l'histoire générale de la Société, la collection de tous ses faits et gestes, eussent dit nos ancêtres... Les Scènes de la vie privée représentent l'enfance, l'adolescence et leurs fautes, comme les Scènes de la vie de province représentent l'âge des passions, des calculs, des intérêts et de l'ambition. Puis les Scènes de la vie parisienne offrent le tableau des goûts, des vices et de toutes les choses effrénées qu'excitent les mœurs particulières aux capitales où se rencontrent à la fois l'extrême bien et l'extrême mal… (Extrait de l’avant-propos de S...

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Fiction, Comedy, Literature, Psychology

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Parva Naturalia [the short treatises on nature (a conventional Latin title first used by Giles of Rome)] is a collection of books by Aristotle, which discuss natural phenomena involving the body and the soul. The books are as follows: I - On Sensation and the Sensible II - On Memory and Recollection III - On Sleeping and Waking IV - On Dreams V - On Prophecy in Sleep VI - On Longevity and Shortness of Life VII - On Youth and Old Age, Life and Death VIII - On Respiration ( Summary Adapted from Wikipedia )...

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Philosophy, Classics (antiquity), Ancient Texts, Psychology, Science

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Still one of the most radical novels of the 20th Century, James Joyce's Ulysses is considered to have ushered in the era of the modern novel. Loosely based on Homer's Odyssey, the book follows Leopold Bloom and a number of other characters through an ordinary day, twenty four hours, in Dublin, on June 16, 1904. The text is dense and difficult, but perfectly suited to an oral reading, filled with language tricks, puns and jokes, stream of consciousness, and bawdiness. NOTE: Because of the nature of this project, there was a bending of usual procedures: pub-like background noise was encouraged, as well as group readings; and no editing was required, so in places there may be some accidental variation from the original text ... Listener be warned! (Summary by Hugh McGuire)...

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Literature

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The full title of this book is Immortality and the Unseen World - A Study in Old Testament Religion . Oesterley describes the beliefs that pre-Christian Hebrews and Semites held regarding the afterlife and the immortal nature of humans. The nature, form and evolution of these beliefs are derived from the Tanakh (Old Testament), comparisons with the beliefs and mythologies of neighboring cultures, and archeological finds. To develop a full study, additional beliefs of these people are also considered, including the beliefs of the constituent parts of humans; demonology, angelology, shades and the Satan; the home of the dead, ancestor worship, necromancy, and burial customs. Oesterley also hypothesizes on how primitive beliefs in immortality may have developed in pre-Christian times. (Summary by JoeD)...

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History, Myths/Legends, Religion

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Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote their Manifesto in December 1847, as a guide to the fundamental principles and practices of Communists. The Manifesto also predicted the ultimate downfall of the capitalist system. (Summary written by Gesine)...

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Philosophy, Psychology

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Our Mutual Friend (written in the years 1864–65) is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining psychological insight with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, money, money, money, and what money can make of life but is also about human values. In the opening chapters a body is found in the Thames and identified as John Harmon, a young man recently returned to London to receive his inheritance. Were he alive, his father's will would require him to marry Bella Wilfer, a beautiful, mercenary girl whom he had never met. Instead, the money passes to the working-class Boffins, and the effects spread into various corners of London society. (Wikipedia)...

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Fiction, Literature

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So far as I can find out, I have no theory about Jesus to make these talks fit into. I have tried to find out for myself what the old Book of God tells about Him. And here I am trying to tell to others, as simply as I can, what I found. It was by the tedious, twisting path of doubt that I climbed the hill of truth up to some of its summits of certainty. I am free to confess that I am ignorant of the subject treated here save for the statements of that Book, and for the assent within my own spirit to these statements, which has greatly deepened the impression they made, and make. There is no question raised here about that Book itself, but simply a taking and grouping up together of what it says. ( Summary by Introductory Section )...

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Religion, Philosophy, Psychology

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Pat Travis, a spacer renowned for his luck, is suddenly quite out of it. His job is to beat his competitors to sign newly-Contacted human races to commercial contracts... But what can he do when he finds he's on a planet that consults astrology for literally every major decision - and he has arrived on one of the worst-aspected days in history? Michael Shaara, later to write the Pulitzer-winning novel The Killer Angels, wrote this story for Fantastic Universe in 1956. (Summary by Mark F. Smith)...

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Science fiction

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A guide to different kinds of dreams, their meanings, and how they influence our waking lives. (Summary by Andrea Fiore)

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Psychology

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This is a short novel published in 1895 and based vaguely on the battle of Chancellorsville of the American Civil War. Unlike other works on the subject, Crane's novel does not concentrate on the big picture or the glory of war but on the psychology of one of its soldiers....

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Historical Fiction, War stories

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A very wise physician has said that “every illness has two parts—what it is, and what the patient thinks about it.” What the patient thinks about it is often more important and more troublesome than the real disease. What the patient thinks of life, what life means to him is also of great importance and may be the bar that shuts out all real health and happiness. The following pages are devoted to certain ideals of life which I would like to give to my patients, the long-time patients who have especially fallen to my lot. (Summary by Herbert J Hall - from the Preface)...

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Advice, Religion, Psychology