Product Description: Mary Dermody is destined to be together with George Germaine one day, or so at least her grandmother prophesizes. Destiny at first doesn’t seem to adhere to this plan, and the pair is separated and lose sight of each other. But when George saves a young woman from drowning, a strong connection seems to develop between them, which seems to be almost supernatural...read more

Product Description: Heart and Science, one of Wilkie Collins’ later novels, is concerned with the debate over what he termed ‘the hideous secrets of vivisection.’ The tale of a family split by various opinions and sentiments, as well as the novel’s clear parallels to the animal welfare/animal rights debates of today will strike chords of understanding with modern readers, who always relate well to the accessible conversational style of Collins’ prose...read more

THE doctors could do no more for the Dowager Lady Berrick. When the medical advisers of a lady who has reached seventy years of age recommend the mild climate of the South of France, they mean in plain language that they have arrived at the end of their resources. Her ladyship gave the mild climate a fair trial, and then decided (as she herself expressed it) to "die at home." Traveling slowly, she had reached Paris at the date when I last heard of her. It was then the beginning of November. A week later, I met with her nephew, Lewis Romayne, at the club. "What brings you to London at this time of year?" I asked. "The fatality that pursues me," he answered grimly. "I am one of the unluckiest men living."

Product Description: No Name (1862) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century novel revolving around the issue of illegitimacy. It was originally serialised in Charles Dickens’ magazine All the Year Round before book publication. The story begins in 1846, at Combe-Raven in West Somerset, the country residence of the happy Vanstone family...read more

Lo que empieza como una cáustica, y a menudo hilarante comedia de equívocos, se transforma paulatinamente en un horrible cuadro conyugal de traición, venganza, malos tratos, locura y asesinato. Marido y mujer, inmediatamente posterior a La piedra lunar, pertenece al período de mayor creatividad de Wilkie Collins.

Product Description: En esta inolvidable historia, un sueño premonitorio le salva la vida al protagonista, aunque le condena a vivir en el infernal mundo de las pesadillas, y al terror de la espera, de La dama del sueño.

Product Description: Charles Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius...read more

Product Description: Charles Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius...read more

Product Description: This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

Product Description: This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

Charles Pineau Duclos was a French writer of biographies and novels, who lived and worked during the first half of the eighteenth century. He prospered sufficiently well, as a literary man, to be made secretary to the French Academy, and to be allowed to succeed Voltaire in the office of historiographer of France.

Product Description: I had been living at Tunbridge Wells and nowhere else, going on for ten years, when my medical man—very clever in his profession, and the prettiest player I ever saw in my life of a hand at Long Whist, which was a noble and a princely game before Short was heard of—said to me, one day, as he sat feeling my pulse on the actual sofa which my poor dear sister Jane worked before her spine came on, and laid her on a board for fifteen months at a stretch—the most upright woman that ever lived—said to me, “What we want, ma’am, is a fillip...read more

Product Description: IN the month of August 1889, and in the middle of the seaside holiday, a message came to me from Wilkie Collins, then, though we hoped otherwise, on his death-bed. It was conveyed to me by Mr. A. P. Watt. He told me that his son had just come from Wilkie Collins: that they had been speaking of his novel, "Blind Love," then running in the Illustrated London News: that the novel was, unfortunately, unfinished: that he himself could not possibly finish it: and that he would be very glad, if I would finish it if I could find the time...read more

Product Description: "L'hôtel hanté" de Wilkie Collins. Ecrivain britannique de l'époque victorienne (1824 – 1889).

Product Description: La Pierre de Lune est un diamant maudit, qui nuit à tous ses propriétaires successifs depuis son vol lors de la mise à sac d’un temple indien par l’armée anglaise. Offert à une jeune femme le jour de ses 18 ans, il disparaît au cours de la nuit suivante...read more

Excerpt: ...alone. "Who engaged that new servant of yours?" he asked. "I mean the fat fellow, with the curly flaxen hair." "Hiring servants," I replied, "is not much in my way. I left the engagement of the new man to Mrs. Mozeen." Rothsay walked gravely up to my bedside. "Lepel," he said, "your respectable housekeeper is in love with the fat young footman." It is not easy to amuse a man suffering from bronchitis. But this new outbreak of absurdity was more than I could resist, even with a mustard-plaster on my chest. "I thought I should raise your spirits," Rothsay proceeded. "When I came to your house this morning, the valet opened the door to me. I expressed my surprise at his condescending to take that trouble. He informed me that Joseph was otherwise engaged. 'With anybody in particular?' I asked, humoring the joke. 'Yes, sir, with the housekeeper. She's teaching him how to brush his hair, so as to show off his good looks to the best advantage.' Make up your mind, my friend, to lose Mrs. Mozeen

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - In the year 1860, the reputation of Doctor Wybrow as a London physician reached its highest point. It was reported on good authority that he was in receipt of one of the largest incomes derived from the practice of medicine in modern times. One afternoon, towards the close of the London season, the Doctor had just taken his luncheon after a specially hard morning's work in his consulting-room, and with a formidable list of visits to patients at their own houses to fill up the rest of his day - when the servant announced that a lady wished to speak to him. 'Who is she?' the Doctor asked. 'A stranger?'

This early work by Wilkie Collins was originally published in 1875. Born in Marylebone, London in 1824, Collins' family enrolled him at the Maida Hill Academy in 1835, but then took him to France and Italy with them between 1836 and 1838. Returning to England, Collins attended Cole's boarding school, and completed his education in 1841, after which he was apprenticed to the tea merchants Antrobus & Co. in the Strand. In 1846, Collins became a law student at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1851, although he never practiced. It was in 1848, a year after the death of his father, that he published his first book, The Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A., to good reviews. The 1860s saw Collins' creative high-point, and it was during this decade that he achieved fame and critical acclaim, with his four major novels, The Woman in White (1860), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868). The Moonstone, meanwhile is seen by many as the first true detective novel – T. S. Eliot called it "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels. . .in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe.” Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions.

Excerpt: ...Crayford's conduct with needless irritability. "Why are you staring at me?" he asked. "Why are you looking unlike yourself?" Crayford answered, quietly. Wardour made no reply. He renewed the conversation with Frank. "One of the county families?" he resumed. "The Winterbys of Yew Grange, I dare say?" "No," said Frank; "but friends of the Witherbys, very likely. The Burnhams." Desperately as he struggled to maintain it, Wardour's self-control failed him. He started violently. The clumsily-wound handkerchief fell off his hand. Still looking at him attentively, Crayford picked it up. "There is your handkerchief, Richard," he said. "Strange!" "What is strange?" "You told us you had hurt yourself with the ax

"BASIL was the second work of fiction which I produced. On its appearance, it was condemned off-hand by a certain class of readers, as an outrage on their sense of propriety. . . ." -- Wilkie Collins

This novel ranks the third, in order of succession, of the works of fiction which I have produced. The history of its reception, on its first appearance, is soon told. Unfortunately for me, "Hide And Seek" was originally published in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-four, at the outbreak of the Crimean War. All England felt the absorbing interest of watching that serious national event; and new books—some of them books of far higher pretensions than mine—found the minds of readers in general pre-occupied or indifferent. My own little venture in fiction necessarily felt the adverse influence of the time. The demand among the booksellers was just large enough to exhaust the first edition, and there the sale of this novel, in its original form, terminated.