"Peter makes good, and stories of other dogs" by Gertrude Thomas is a collection of children’s dog stories written in the early 20th century. It blends a novella about a brave mixed-breed named Peter and his bond with a boy, Ralph, with a series of short, moral-tinged vignettes about many other dogs. The focus is on character, courage, and usefulness rather than pedigree. It will appeal to readers who enjoy heartwarming animal tales with gentle lessons. The opening of the collection follows Peter from his good-natured parentage to adoption by siblings Mabel and Ralph, his homesick first nights, and his growing loyalty and courage—guarding the children at street crossings, rescuing the family cat from pedigreed bullies, helping at ball games, and even trying to stamp out a woods fire. On the farm he aids with chores and fetches help when a bull menaces Ralph; later he tracks his college-bound master to campus, saves him from a dormitory fire, and is ultimately killed by a reckless car, inspiring Ralph to compile worthy dog tales. The book then pivots to “The Tattlers,” where a park quarrel between Pixie the pampered Pomeranian and Bob the young Airedale prompts Judge Airedale to curb gossip by making the dogs trade true stories of canine grit and service. Early tales include a poodle at a grand wedding, Airedale cleverness, a war-scarred ambulance dog, a shrewd farm hound-turned-detective, a German‑speaking Great Dane, a sailor’s water spaniel, loyal working-class dogs like Gyp and Buff, the devoted mongrel Whitey, a displaced Russian wolfhound, and Dan the milkman’s collie-shepherd—each spotlighting everyday bravery and devotion. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"Servants and service" by Ruth Lamb is a domestic advice manual written in the late 19th century. It lays out a practical and strongly Christian view of household service, urging young women and their mistresses toward honorable conduct, trust, and a shared “family” spirit. The work blends moral counsel with day‑to‑day guidance on work habits, relationships, and responsibilities, especially in the nursery and across the household. The opening of the book explains its origin in the Girl’s Own Paper and notes that a later legal chapter is by another writer, then elevates domestic service as both honorable and responsible, grounding it in Christian duty, trust, and the idea that servants are part of the family; it cites biblical models and urges prayerful choice of places with Sabbath privileges. It warns against gossip and spite when leaving, and values character and neat, modest habits—illustrated by hiring anecdotes—over mere experience. It criticizes “hair-splitting” attitudes of “not my place,” promotes cheerful helping, good manners, and shows the advantages of service compared with factory or shop work. It devotes strong counsel to nursery work—favoring warmth, playfulness, truthfulness about accidents, and pure speech—and to the servant’s influence over children, along with mutual forbearance among staff and wise choices about when to speak up or stay silent. Further chapters stress thoroughness, economical use of time and property, confessing breakages, shared punctuality, fair and private fault-finding, avoiding hasty notices, practising real politeness at home, and giving truthful, balanced references. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"The earliest historical relations between Mexico and Japan" by Zelia Nuttall is a historical study written in the early 20th century. Drawing on Spanish and Japanese archives, it reconstructs the first official contacts between New Spain and Tokugawa Japan, focusing on embassies, trade overtures, shipwrecks, and the diplomatic actors who shaped them. The work follows figures such as Tokugawa Ieyasu, Hidetada, William Adams, Don Rodrigo de Vivero, Sebastián Vizcaíno, and Friar Luis Sotelo, and it explains how hopeful exchanges gave way to Japan’s isolation. It will appeal to readers interested in early modern diplomacy, maritime trade, and cross-cultural encounters. The opening of the study explains how newly uncovered Japanese documents, identified through the efforts of C. A. Lera and collaborators, clarify the true start of official Japan–Mexico relations and complement earlier Mexican and Spanish sources. It then narrates Ieyasu’s initial invitations to Manila’s authorities around the turn of the 17th century, Spanish caution after earlier maritime seizures, and the 1608 renewal of talks driven by Governor Vivero and the English pilot William Adams, leading to Uraga’s opening and formal safe-passage. A pivotal episode follows: Vivero’s shipwreck in Japan and the notable Japanese hospitality, which spurred the Viceroy of Mexico to dispatch Sebastián Vizcaíno with thanks, returned Japanese merchants, and unstated aims to survey ports and seek rumored “gold and silver” islands. The account details Vizcaíno’s protocol standoff and audiences with Hidetada and Ieyasu, the exchange of gifts (notably a European clock), his petitions to survey and build a ship, his denunciation of the Dutch and clash with Adams, and the simultaneous rise of anti-Christian measures after court intrigues. It summarizes Vizcaíno’s coastal surveys and setbacks, Masamune’s patronage of a new embassy led by Friar Sotelo and Hasekura, and the mission’s celebrated reception in New Spain and onward to Spain and Rome—foreshadowing, even in this opening portion, the forces that soon drove Japan toward isolation. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Rupert Godwin by M. E. Braddon is a novel written in the late 19th century. It blends domestic idyll with financial intrigue and mounting suspense, centering on the collision between a frank, honourable sea-captain, Harley Westford, his devoted wife Clara and children, and the magnetic yet unscrupulous banker, Rupert Godwin. Themes of money-market panic, hidden histories, and moral peril surface early, with Godwin’s eerie clerk Jacob and his cherished daughter Julia deepening the tension, while Violet Westford’s youth and suitors suggest a contrasting thread of romance. The opening of the story moves from the Westfords’ sunlit Hampshire haven to a dark contest over trust and money. Captain Westford deposits his hard-won savings and the family’s deeds with Godwin, then—warned too late by his mate Gilbert of rumours about the bank—races to reclaim the funds. At Godwin’s grand country house, the banker feigns compliance, lures him into a barred vault in the disused wing, and strikes him down, afterward masking the deed while his watchful clerk hovers near. Meanwhile, Clara, shaken by a dread tied to Godwin’s name, falls ill; her slow recovery is shadowed by the Captain’s silence and the missing receipt she expected. In counterpoint, Violet steals evening meetings with a talented but poor landscape painter, George Stanmore, as Lionel keeps vigil at home. The section closes with hope and fear interlaced: a secret young love blooming in the forest, and a mother anxiously awaiting a word that does not come. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"An essay on combustion, with a view to a new art of dying and painting" by Fulhame is a scientific treatise written in the late 18th century. It investigates combustion, oxidation, and reduction through meticulous experiments, challenges both phlogistic and antiphlogistic accounts, and proposes practical methods for depositing metals onto textiles for artistic and cartographic use. The work argues that water’s hydrogen drives reductions and that water is central to oxygenation, tying chemical theory to a proposed new art of dyeing and painting. The opening of the treatise presents a preface recounting the author’s long pursuit of making gold and silver cloth by chemical means, its application to painting and to maps with silvered rivers and golden cities, the mixed reception of her specimens, and her decision to publish despite the lack of patrons and fear of plagiarism. She describes her simple apparatus, adopts the French chemical nomenclature, and pointedly answers expected criticism—especially toward a woman conducting scientific work. The introduction surveys major theories of combustion (from Becher and Stahl to Lavoisier, Macquer, Scheele, and Kirwan), critiques their complexity, and advances her thesis that water is the source of oxygen in oxidations and that hydrogen from water is the universal reducer. At the start of the experimental chapters, she uses silk impregnated with metal salts and streams of gases to show that hydrogen gas reduces many metals at ambient temperature, that vivid color changes track degrees of oxygenation, and—crucially—that moisture is essential, leading her to a double-affinity explanation via water’s decomposition. She then shows with phosphorus (in ether solution or as vapor) that reductions of gold, silver, and other metals occur only when water is present, reinforcing the same mechanism. The opening of the sulfur chapter demonstrates that sulfurous vapors rapidly reduce several metals on wet silk (notably yielding brilliant gold), before the excerpt breaks off mid-experiment. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

“Kék mesekönyv” by Elek Benedek is a collection of world folktales and fables written in the early 20th century. Framed for young readers, it retells classic stories in clear, engaging language, highlighting moral insight and cleverness over brute force. It opens with an Indian Panchatantra cycle about the war between crows and owls, guided by the wily crow minister Stirajívin. Expect nested tales, talking animals, and gentle, memorable lessons. The opening of the collection first presents a “magic lamp” narrator who promises color-themed volumes of the world’s finest tales, then explains the Panchatantra as an ancient five-part treasury of didactic animal fables taught by the sage Viṣṇuśarman to three foolish princes. The chosen third book tells how the crow king Meghavarna outwits the owl king Arimardana: through layered exempla (the aborted election of the owl as bird-king, the hare who saves elephants by invoking the Moon, a false ascetic who devours litigants, tricksters who dupe a priest, the self-sacrificing wild dove, the mouse-made maiden, the speaking cave, and more) the text counsels prudence, secrecy, and distrust of feigned friends. Stirajívin stages a public quarrel, gains the owls’ trust, blocks their cave with brush, and leads the crows in burning the stronghold. The section then begins a Székely wonder tale about a prince seeking immortality—a quest aided by magical gifts from a giant and a princess—which reaches the moment he returns with life-giving water to revive his father when the excerpt ends. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

La détresse des Harpagon by Pierre Mille is a novel written in the early 20th century. It portrays a declining provincial family in Burgundy—an amiable, shortsighted father, his severe, saving wife, and their adult children Élise and Cléante—pressed by debt, social embarrassment, and a predatory land dealer. Echoing the myth of Molière’s Harpagon through lineage and theme, the story explores avarice and prodigality, wounded honor, and turbulent desire within a crumbling household. The opening follows a spry but aging country gentleman on a morning hunt, then undercuts his small happiness: his wife melts candle stubs and counts every penny, villagers quietly discuss his mortgages, and a visiting scholar hints at his descent from Molière’s avarice while the local usurer tightens the net. At the pond he is brusquely expelled by the creditor’s guard, a humiliation that sends him home to a worse blow: a letter from the Riviera reporting that Élise has been seen at night with a guest, causing scandal and her return. The next day an old friend arrives only to reveal that Cléante has forged his endorsement on a large bill, which he has paid to spare the family’s name, urging the son’s removal from Paris. When Élise arrives, her mother’s interrogation meets cool defiance: she insists nothing that could lead to pregnancy occurred, refuses a convent, and asserts a fierce claim to pleasure and freedom. The section closes with the parents aghast and the daughter’s blistering indictment of their marriage and upbringing, as financial ruin and family conflict converge. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Further nonsense verse and prose by Lewis Carroll is a collection of humorous verse and prose written in the early 20th century. Edited and framed by Langford Reed, it gathers largely uncollected or newly printed nonsense poems, playful letters, acrostics, and comic sketches drawn from magazines, manuscripts, and early journals. The volume highlights Carroll’s wordplay, parodies, and whimsical logic—often inspired by children—while the foreword sets his life and methods in context. The opening of the collection begins with the editor’s expansive foreword, offering a lively biography of Charles Dodgson, explaining the sources of the pieces, defending nonsense as a deliberate, technical art, and recounting his photography, friendships, the genesis of Alice, his mathematical work, and meticulous standards. After this scene-setting, the selections launch into light verse and parodies from his early period—comic laments and a mock “coronach,” seaside satire, a limerick, a tipsy ode, and a playful “lesson in Latin”—alongside ballad pastiche and a tongue‑in‑cheek essay on “poetry for the million.” Signature Carrollian play follows: the shaped “Mouse’s Tail,” a rhymed letter with sketches, affectionate acrostics, and a long, mock‑heroic narrative about a self-styled poet (“Wilhelm von Schmitz”). The excerpt concludes with a whimsical letter‑tale about three cats and the start of a mock‑medieval chronicle, signaling the variety and tone of the pieces to come. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"La venuta dei Normanni in Sicilia nella poesia e nella leggenda" by Michele Catalano is a historical-literary study written in the early 20th century. It explores how the Norman conquest of Sicily was remembered, shaped, and reimagined across medieval Latin poetry, later epics, chronicles, and popular legend, and how these narratives evolved into nationalist readings in modern times. The focus is on sources, motifs, and the tension between sober historiography and the allure of epic and folklore. The opening of the study sets the scene with the Arab-Norman wars and the Norman rise in Sicily, arguing that such exploits naturally fed poetry and legend despite later, cooler chronicling. It then examines 11th–12th century Latin writing: Guglielmo Appulo’s classicizing epic on Robert Guiscard and the siege of Palermo, and Malaterra’s partisan Historia Sicula—with inserted leonine verses, miracle-laden episodes (like St. George at Cerami), and probable apocrypha—while noting how Italian chronicles tended to filter out marvels. The next section argues for an embryonic Norman-Sicilian epic cycle, citing shared medieval motifs (the coffin stratagem, providential framing), the widely diffused treasure-statue tale attached to Guiscard, and echoes in French chansons and Arthurian lore localized in Sicily (Mongibello, Fata Morgana), with a cautious reading of Dante’s inclusion of Guiscard. Catalano concludes this medieval cycle remained thin and soon eclipsed, replaced in popular taste by the Carolingian cycle, owing to cultural, political, and scholarly factors. He then surveys a learned revival in the 17th–18th centuries: Balli’s Tasso-like Palermo liberato, fragmentary or lost poems by Sorba, Munebria, and Morabito (often centered on Serlone), Reitani’s baroque Aeneid pastiche, and Vitale’s dialect Sicilia liberata—an energetic romance-epic rich in myth and nature—plus Meli’s unrealized plan. The beginning of the 19th-century chapter ties the new epics to Sicilian autonomist sentiment, highlighting Vigo’s Ruggiero as a patriotic allegory (with infernal machinery, set pieces, and a final acclamation of Ruggero), and briefly noting other contemporary works known through titles, fragments, and correspondence. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Die Brücke im Dschungel by B. Traven is a novel written in the early 20th century. Set in the Mexican jungle around a precarious bridge and a pump station, it follows an itinerant narrator and his acquaintance Sleigh among Indigenous villagers as a festive night turns grave when a small boy disappears by the river. The story foregrounds parental love, communal bonds, and the ever-present danger of the wilderness while tracing the uneasy ties between outsiders and locals. The opening of the novel introduces the narrator’s chance meetings with Sleigh, an American who lives among Indigenous people, then shifts to a riverside settlement preparing for a dance. Music fails to arrive, but the village gathers: Garza fiddles, his wife Carmelita tends the family, and their exuberant son Carlos dotes on his older half-brother Manuel, home from Texas. In the thick, moonless night a single splash goes largely unnoticed; when Carlos vanishes, rumors swirl that he rode off, while Carmelita becomes convinced he fell from the unrailed bridge—his new boots betraying him. The community sparks fires along the banks, dives in the murky water, and sweeps the shore with torches in a solemn, collective search, as the scene closes on Manuel heading into the dark. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Mariners catalans célebres by Lluís Maria Soler y Puig is a historical lecture-essay from the late 19th century. It offers a panoramic account of Catalan seafaring achievement, focusing on notable naval leaders and the development of the Crown of Aragon’s maritime power. The likely topic is the rise, zenith, and gradual decline of Catalonia’s military and merchant navy as seen through its most celebrated captains and admirals. The text begins by explaining the hierarchy and duties aboard medieval ships—Admiral, Captain General, Vice-Admiral, comitre, and patró—then proceeds century by century. It traces the naval foundation under Ramon Berenguer III and IV, the conquest of the Balearics with Jaume I, and the 13th-century Italian-Sicilian wars highlighted by Roger de Llúria’s sweeping victories and the brief Catalan lordship of Djerba. The 14th century brings Sardinian campaigns, conflicts with Genoa (including alliances with Venice), Bernat de Cabrera’s maritime ordinances, and the War of the Two Peters with a decisive victory off Barcelona in 1359, alongside the prominent Marquet line of captains and municipal armadas from Barcelona. The 15th century features operations around Naples and Genoa—Fivaller’s bold expedition foremost—followed by the 16th century’s anti-Barbary actions, Catalan participation at Lepanto, and notable figures such as the Requesens family. The closing chapters recount the naval decline under a Castilian-led fleet, yet single out late standouts like Antoni Barceló’s relentless corsair-hunting, Felip Bauzà’s pioneering hydrography, and patriotic privateering by Basart and Bosch, ending with a tribute to the enduring maritime glory of Catalonia. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Evening songs by Vítězslav Hálek is a collection of lyric poems written in the mid-to-late 19th century. The book centers on romantic love shaped by nature’s beauty, spiritual devotion, and the calling of the poet. The poems follow a lover who adores and courts a maiden, weaving images of spring, moonlight, stars, doves, and nightingales into prayers, vows, and confessions. Love appears as both bliss and wound, a divine gift mingled with tears; joy and separation alternate, and dreams promise reunion. Alongside intimate addresses are meditations on the heart’s mysteries and the sanctity of song, casting the bard as prophet and healer who turns sorrow into hymn and bids a realm of love for all who suffer. The sequence closes in quiet nocturnes and farewells—moonlit benedictions, distant partings, and a tender “good night” carried by clouds. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"Impressions of great naturalists" by Henry Fairfield Osborn is a collection of biographical sketches and reminiscences written in the early 20th century. The volume offers reflective, character-driven portraits of major figures in evolution and natural history, blending Osborn’s personal encounters with concise intellectual histories to inspire and guide aspiring naturalists. The opening of the work begins with an autobiographic foreword in which Osborn praises self-effacing, creative naturalists and recounts the influences that shaped him—Victorian scientists and poets, rigorous teachers at Princeton and in Europe, formative study under Balfour and Huxley, and a brief, vivid meeting with Darwin. He contrasts quiet, single-purposed creators (Darwin, Wallace, Pasteur) with combative public champions (Huxley, Cope), and even parallels powerful contemporaries like J. P. Morgan and Theodore Roosevelt, stressing courage, humility, and public service. It then turns to the first profile, Alfred Russel Wallace, tracing his modest origins, self-education, tropical fieldwork, independent grasp of natural selection (sparked by Malthus), magnanimous joint publication with Darwin, and lasting contributions to mimicry, warning coloration, and zoogeography, alongside his later views on human evolution and social reform. The narrative next opens the Darwin section with an address pairing Darwin and Lincoln, arguing that Darwin’s greatest gift was freeing scientific inquiry from theological constraint, and briskly sketching his Cambridge formation, the Beagle voyage and Lyell’s influence, the long maturation of natural selection, the Wallace episode, and Osborn’s own brief personal impression of Darwin. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Magnolia Flower by Zora Neale Hurston is a lyrical short story written in the early 20th century. Framed as a folktale told by a river to a brook, it centers on love, freedom, and resistance to oppression in the American South. The river recounts how Bentley, a formerly enslaved man turned domineering patriarch, marries Swift Deer, a Cherokee woman, and fathers Magnolia Flower, whose fierce gaze and spirit unsettle those around her. Magnolia falls in love with John, a light-skinned teacher who comes to build a school, provoking Bentley’s rage and his plan to force her into another marriage and hang John. With the help of a frightened servant, Magnolia steals the key from her father as he sleeps, frees John, and the two escape by boat beneath three leaning palms. Discovering their flight, Bentley dies in a fit of fury, and his household falls to ruin. Decades later, the now-elderly lovers return to the palms, sit by the water, and feel the river’s murmur welcome them back, sealing their tale of endurance and love. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"Három mester" by Stefan Zweig is a collection of literary essays written in the early 20th century. It offers vivid, psychologically rich portraits of Balzac, Dickens, and Dostoevsky as archetypal world‑building novelists, using biography and criticism to show how each forges a distinct imaginative cosmos. The focus is on what defines a true “romancier” and the inner laws that drive their creations, seen through a humanist, cosmopolitan lens. The opening of the book first presents a translator’s introduction that places the author in fin‑de‑siècle Vienna and the trauma of the Great War, emphasizing his pacifism, international friendships, polished style, and mission to connect minds across borders; it also frames this volume as part of a wider cycle on great “world builders.” The foreword then states the project: to treat Balzac, Dickens, and Dostoevsky as the century’s exemplary “romanciers,” distinguishes them by their spheres (society, family, the solitary soul), and clarifies that the essays are syntheses for readers who already know the works. At the start of the Balzac essay, Napoleon’s age is shown shaping Balzac’s will to conquer—transposed from the sword to the pen—culminating in the Comédie humaine as a deliberately centralized, Paris‑anchored empire of types and energies. The text sketches the ruthless social struggle of ambitious youths and uses Vautrin and Rastignac to show how experience hardens character; it leans on chemical and physiological metaphors to explain social forces, exalts concentrated will and monomania, and contrasts success with the sheer intensity of striving. It also portrays Balzac himself as a monomaniac worker—nocturnal, caffeinated, debt‑ridden, loving by letter—who half‑lived inside his characters and was fascinated by physiognomy, mesmerism, and a visionary “second sight,” before the excerpt cuts off. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

"Cordage and cordage hemp and fibres" by Thomas Woodhouse and Peter Kilgour is an industrial handbook written in the early 20th century. It explains the sources, preparation, spinning, and manufacture of cordage—ropes, cords, and twines—linking plant botany and cultivation to fibre extraction, grading, machinery, and practical rope-making, with notes on trade and marketing. The opening of the book sets its scope and value: a brief preface stresses cordage’s essential role in industry and promises a compact guide to fibres, processes, and machinery. It then defines “cordage” and surveys the three main fibre sources—leaf fibres (e.g., agave/sisal), bast fibres from stems (true hemp, flax, jute), and cotton from seed hairs—illustrating their structure and why cotton’s twist aids driving ropes. Early chapters distinguish soft fibres (true hemp from Cannabis sativa) from hard fibres (manila, sisal, New Zealand, Mauritius), outline hemp cultivation, and describe retting, breaking, and scutching, from traditional water-retting to mechanical methods. The narrative turns to hard fibres with practical notes on growing and harvesting manila and sisal, decortication, washing and baling setups, standardized grading, and concise production and price data, then begins the machinery section for soft fibres, describing softening, cutting/breaking, hackling strategy, and the start of the spread-board process where short lengths are formed into a continuous sliver. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Joulu-yön tarina by Larin-Kyösti is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. The pieces blend folklore, moral fables, and everyday Finnish life, shifting from wintry mysticism and Lapland legend to satirical portraits of peasants and petty officials. Central figures include an old fisherman awaiting a gentle death, a young Sámi who discovers the joik, and villagers and clerks whose small vices and quiet hopes are tenderly, sometimes bitingly, observed. The opening of the collection unfolds through varied vignettes: an aged island fisherman, Jurkka, welcomes Christmas-night death after a luminous vision of his “life-tree,” and is later found peaceful, a storm-shattered rowan branch beside him. A lonely Sámi, Juoksa, sees the northern lights, meets a radiant haltia, finds the joik, wins a bride, and carries song across a previously mute Lapland. A Siberian prisoner, Iivana, loses his tame mouse to a cruel guard—an old rival—and curses him; years later, a vast mouse horde devours the guard as Iivana, now with his wife, senses it in a dream. Comic realism follows as tobacco-obsessed Moona-Matti pilfers others’ leavings until a stablehand’s prank with tainted smoke humiliates him into treating the crew and softening his habits. A stern parable shows Pekka, a long-serving farmhand gifted a smallholding by a kind pastor, ruining it, blaming his benefactor, and returning as a bitter vagrant to demand compensation—only to be turned away. Finally, a late-night station sketch frames the preening ticket-checker Sulo Kisko, his prickly flirtation with waitress Elfriida, and his jealousy of a weary tinsmith, setting a mood of petty vanity and quiet yearning. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Le Disciple est un roman de Paul Bourget (1852 † 1935) paru en 1889, écrit entre septembre 1888 et mai 1889. Roman d'analyse et d'éducation pour les générations nouvelles de l'époque, le chef-d'œuvre de Paul Bourget est aussi un roman à thèse puisque l'écrivain y dénonce la responsabilité du maître à penser et accuse la science moderne de s'être substituée à la religion sans fournir de morale. Œuvre de transition qui occupe une place centrale dans la production littéraire de Paul Bourget, le livre clôt la période durant laquelle l'écrivain se consacre au roman d'analyse, tout empreint de fine psychologie humaine et d'étude des mœurs, pour annoncer l’avènement du roman à thèse, moraliste et engagé en faveur du catholicisme, puisqu’à partir du Disciple, en 1889, Paul Bourget amorce son retour à la foi pour se convertir définitivement en 1901. En participant aux deux formes de romans (roman d'analyse et roman à thèse), Le Disciple, roman « hybride », marque également une coupure importante dans la vie sentimentale et sociale du romancier qui, à cette époque, se marie et rompt avec ses amis (les Cahen d'Anvers notamment) et son milieu. (This summary is from Wikipedia.)

"Varastaiteilija" by E. W. Hornung is a collection of short stories written in the late 19th century. It follows the elegant gentleman-thief A. J. Raffles and his friend-narrator Bunny Manders as they stage audacious burglaries that turn the detective genre on its head, mixing high-society polish with criminal daring. The opening of Varastaiteilija begins with a critical preface that traces the arc from picaresque tales to modern detective fiction, positioning Raffles as a deliberate return to the charming rogue. The first story, Idus Martii, introduces Bunny ruined by gambling at Raffles’s Albany rooms, on the brink of suicide, when Raffles coolly reveals he is a professional burglar and enlists Bunny for a Bond Street jeweler heist that very night. They infiltrate via an empty upstairs flat, drill through a fortified door and grille, time their moves around the night watch, and quietly strip the window display before slipping back to Albany with a glittering haul—after which Bunny, shaken yet dazzled, agrees to become Raffles’s partner. The next tale, Pukuharjotus, opens with the notorious magnate Ruben Rosenthal flaunting two purplish diamonds and a revolver at a club dinner; Raffles treats the boast as a challenge, vows to take the stones, and begins discreet surveillance while keeping Bunny largely in the dark—the excerpt ending before the plan is revealed. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Fenn és lenn by Ferenc Herczeg is a novel written in the late 19th century. Set around a southern Hungarian market town, it opposes the “high” life of the Lovrich barons to the “low” but lively world of the Pogány family. Its focus is Kun Attila, a celebrated explorer and the baron’s estranged nephew, who returns from Africa and is drawn between the frank, spirited Jolán and the proud noblewoman Etel while old family wounds resurface. The story promises romance and social satire against a vividly drawn provincial backdrop. The opening of this novel presents the landscape, the ruined “Jó Ali” tower, the town of Boros-Keve, and the baronial castle opposite the cheerful “Pogányvár” summer house. We meet Jolán and her young cousin Béni at play when Attila arrives unannounced from his travels, is warmly welcomed by the widow Pogányné, and deflects questions about his African exploits. A sweeping family backstory follows: the Lovrich rise from swine-merchant wealth to nobility; Iván, the present baron; his sister Sarolta’s scandal with the engineer Kun; her first marriage to a count, then her secret second marriage to Kun, whose early death leaves their son Attila to be raised by the kind, middling Pogánys. Attila grows up, rejects a post arranged by the baron, and wins fame on a perilous Central African expedition before returning. Daily visits to Pogányvár rekindle boyhood intimacy with Jolán; a daring climb to the fortress ends with her reckless play on the parapet, Attila’s fierce rescue, and a charged, near-intimate moment, capped by a token—an impromptu “little eagle”—for Béni. Rain then forces Attila indoors; a stiff summons from Iván leads to a cold, businesslike settlement and a disappointing, bloodless first meeting. As he leaves through the garden, he encounters Etel, whose striking poise and cool curiosity spark a taut, suggestive exchange just as the scene breaks off. (This is an automatically generated summary.)