The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, originally titled The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale, though often abbreviated to Rasselas, is an apologue about bliss and ignorance by Samuel Johnson. The book's original working title was "The Choice of Life". The book was first published in April 1759 in England. Early readers considered Rasselas to be a work of philosophical and practical importance and critics often remark on the difficulty of classifying it as a novel.
Uncovers African influences on the Western imagination during the eighteenth century, paying particular attention to the ways Ethiopia inspired and shaped the work of Samuel Johnson.
The long-lost conclusion to The Once and Future King, in which King Arthur faces his final battle against his son. This magical account of King Arthur’s last night on earth, rediscovered in a collection of T. H. White’s papers at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, spent twenty-six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list following its publication in 1977. While preparing for his final, fatal battle with his bastard son, Mordred, Arthur returns to the Animal Council with Merlyn, where the deliberations center on ways to abolish war. More self-revealing than any other of White’s books, Merlyn shows his mind at work as he agonized over whether to join the fight against Nazi Germany while penning the epic that would become The Once and Future King. The Book of Merlyn has been cited as a major influence by such illustrious writers as Kazuo Ishiguro, J. K. Rowling, Helen Macdonald, Neil Gaiman, and Lev Grossman. “Arriving from beyond the curve of time and apparently from the grave, The Book of Merlyn stirs its own pages, saying, wait: you didn’t get the whole story. . . . It gives us a final glimpse of those two immortal characters, Wart and Merlyn, up close, slo-mo, with a considered and affectionate scrutiny. The book is an elegiac posting from a master storyteller of the twentieth century. Its reissue in our next century is just as welcome as when it first arrived forty years ago. . . . Certainly the moral questions about the military use of force perplex the world still. . . . The efficacy of treaties, the trading of insults among the potentates of the day, the testing of weapons, the weaponizing of trade—these strategies are still front and center. Rather terrifyingly so. We do well to revisit what that old schoolteacher of children, Merlyn, has been trying to point out to us about power and responsibility.” —Gregory Maguire, bestselling author of Wicked,from the foreword “Such a small thing, The Book of Merlyn, to hold so much. Joyful and despairing, heartbreaking, yet full of hope. As wonderful and fearful to read today as it was when I first found it in 1978. And the world has as much need of it today as it did then—more, perhaps. But will the world be ready to listen?” —Mercedes Lackey, New York Times–bestselling author of the Valdemar and Elves on the Road series
"She Stoops to Conquer" is a comedy play written by the Anglo-Irish playwright Oliver Goldsmith. It was first performed in London in 1773. The play is a classic of English literature and is known for its humor, wit, and exploration of social class distinctions. The plot revolves around the attempts of two young men, Marlow and Hastings, to court the wealthy Miss Kate Hardcastle and her cousin Constance Neville. Mistaken identities, misunderstandings, and comedic situations ensue when Marlow mistakes the Hardcastle home for an inn and behaves differently towards Kate than he does towards ladies of his own class. The title, "She Stoops to Conquer," refers to the central plot point where Kate pretends to be a barmaid to win over Marlow, who is shy and awkward around upper-class women but more confident with women of lower social status.
