Showing results by narrator "Sam Kusi" in All Categories

Once there was a Prince who wanted to marry a Princess. Only a real one would do. So he traveled through all the world to find her, and everywhere things went wrong. There were Princesses aplenty, but how was he to know whether they were real Princesses? There was something not quite right about them all. So he came home again and was unhappy, because he did so want to have a real Princess.

Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midlands town, from 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Leavened with comic elements, Middlemarch approaches significant historical events in a realist mode: the Reform Act 1832, early railways, and the accession of King William IV. It looks at medicine of the time and reactionary views in a settled community facing unwelcome change.

Poe prided himself on the variety of his subjects. This is his only tale that can possibly be read as a simple happy love story. Probably because of its superficial comedy — reminiscent of "Lionizing" — it has been more popular with ordinary readers than with professed critics.

Von Kempelen and his Discovery (1849). First published in The Flag of Our Union, April 14, 1849. Created as a hoax during the California Gold Rush. After the very minute and elaborate paper by Arago, to say nothing of the summary in 'Silliman's Journal,' with the detailed statement just published by Lieutenant Maury, it will not be supposed, of course, that in offering a few hurried remarks in reference to Von Kempelen's discovery, I have any design to look at the subject in a scientific point of view.

"A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" is a fantastical short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. Set near Charlottesville, Virginia, it is the only story the author set in the state. It was first published in Godey's Lady's Book in April 1844. It was anthologized the following year in Tales, published in New York by Wiley and Putnam. In late November 1827, the unnamed narrator meets Augustus Bedloe. Because of ongoing problems with neuralgia, Bedloe has retained the exclusive services of a 70-year-old physician, Dr. Templeton, a practitioner of mesmerism.

"The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. An unnamed narrator suffering with alcoholism has a strong affection for pets, until he perversely turns to abusing them. In a drunken rage, he hangs his beloved black cat from a tree. He soon finds another black cat but develops a hatred for it as well. When he attempts to kill it with an axe, his wife stops him – and the narrator murders her instead, concealing the body behind a brick wall. But the cat, accidentally walled in with the corpse, alerts the police with its shrieking cry.

The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague, known as the Red Death, by hiding in his abbey. He, along with many other wealthy nobles, hosts a masquerade ball in seven rooms of the abbey, each decorated with a different color. In the midst of their revelry, a mysterious figure disguised as a Red Death victim enters and makes his way through each of the rooms. Prospero dies after confronting this stranger, whose "costume" proves to contain nothing tangible inside it.

"The Imp of the Perverse" is a short story by 19th-century American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe. In the story, the narrator commits murder to inherit a man's estate. A coroner attributes the death to an act of God, and the narrator benefits from his crime. Several years later, the narrator starts obsessing about a possible confession for his crime.

"Morella" is a short story in the Gothic horror genre by 19th-century American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe. An unnamed narrator, deeply affected by his friend Morella, marries her despite not feeling romantic love, drawn instead by an indefinable, intense connection. Morella, a reclusive and profoundly erudite woman, immerses him in her mystical studies, particularly German metaphysical texts on identity, pantheism, and reincarnation. Over time, the narrator grows disturbed by her eerie presence, her cold touch, and her otherworldly voice, which shift his joy into horror.

"The Flying Stars" is one of Chesterton's mysteries featuring Father Brown. It's actually the first of these short stories I've read and I picked it up more because it's a Christmas mystery than to meet Father Brown, even though he is a character I'd like to read more of. The story takes place at an English manor home on Boxing Day. A young lady and the young man who lives next door are present, as is the girl's father, Colonel Adams, a newly arrived uncle and a quite rich godfather.

Whatever doubt may still envelop the rationale of mesmerism, its startling facts are now almost universally admitted. Of these latter, those who doubt, are your mere doubters by profession—an unprofitable and disreputable tribe.

Father Brown (Chesterton's sharp-witted detective priest) and Flambeau (the reformed master-thief and Brown's constant companion) are on a little vacation in Norfolk, invited to visit the mysterious Prince Saradine. It doesn't go well. Sure, Flambeau gets some good fishing in, but there's also a duel with rapiers, a couple of murders, a hanging, a case of mistaken identity, an awkward family reunion, and a gang of surly Sicilians.

"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" is a short story by the American author Edgar Allan Poe about a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death. An example of a tale of suspense and horror, it is also to a certain degree a hoax, as it was published without claiming to be fictional, and many at the time of publication (1845) took it to be a factual account.

The Head of Caesar is a short story by Gilbert Keith Chesterton: There is somewhere in Brompton or Kensington an interminable avenue of tall houses, rich but largely empty, that looks like a terrace of tombs. The very steps up to the dark front doors seem as steep as the side of pyramids; one would hesitate to knock at the door, lest it should be opened by a mummy. But a yet more depressing feature in the grey facade is its telescopic length and changeless continuity.

"Eleonora" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1842 in Philadelphia in the literary annual The Gift. It is often regarded as somewhat autobiographical and has a relatively "happy" ending. The story follows an unnamed narrator who lives with his cousin and aunt in "The Valley of the Many-Colored Grass", an idyllic paradise full of fragrant flowers, fantastic trees, and a "River of Silence". It remains untrodden by the footsteps of strangers and so they live isolated but happy.

Two men appeared simultaneously at the two ends of a sort of passage running along the side of the Apollo Theatre in the Adelphi. The evening daylight in the streets was large and luminous, opalescent and empty. The passage was comparatively long and dark, so each man could see the other as a mere black silhouette at the other end. Nevertheless, each man knew the other, even in that inky outline; for they were both men of striking appearance and they hated each other.

"The Spectacles" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in March 1844 in the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. It is one of Poe's comedy tales. The narrator, 22-year-old Napoleon Buonaparte Froissart, changes his last name to "Simpson" as a requirement to inherit a large sum from a distant cousin, Adolphus Simpson. At the opera he sees a beautiful woman in the audience and falls in love instantly. He describes her beauty at length, despite not being able to see her well; he requires spectacles but, in his vanity, "resolutely refused to employ them".

Antiochus Epiphanes is very generally looked upon as the Gog of the prophet Ezekiel. This honor is, however, more properly attributable to Cambyses, the son of Cyrus. And, indeed, the character of the Syrian monarch does by no means stand in need of any adventitious embellishment.

About twelve o'clock, one sultry night, in the month of August, and during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward, two seamen belonging to the crew of the "Free and Easy," a trading schooner plying between Sluys and the Thames, and then at anchor in that river, were much astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of St. Andrews, London — which ale-house bore for sign the portraiture of a "Jolly Tar.

"William Wilson" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in The Gift, with a setting inspired by Poe's formative years on the outskirts of London. The tale features a doppelgänger. The story follows a man of "a noble descent" named William Wilson. Although denouncing his profligate past, he does not accept full blame for his actions and says that "man was never thus ... tempted before".