A Room with a View is a novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman in the restrained culture of Edwardian era England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. Merchant-Ivory produced an award-winning film adaptation in 1985. The Modern Library ranked A Room with a View 79th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century (1998). The first part of the novel is set in Florence, Italy, and describes a young English woman\'s first visit to Florence, at a time when upper middle class English women were starting to lead independent, adventurous lives. Lucy Honeychurch is touring Italy with her overbearing older cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett, and the novel opens with their complaints about the hotel, "The Pension Bertolini." Their primary concern is that although rooms with a view of the River Arno have been promised for each of them, their rooms instead look over a courtyard. A Mr. Emerson interrupts their "peevish wrangling," offering to swap rooms as he and his son, George Emerson, look over the Arno. This behaviour causes Miss Bartlett some consternation, as it appears impolite. Without letting Lucy speak, Miss Bartlett refuses the offer, looking down on the Emersons because of their unconventional behaviour and thinking it would place her under an "unseemly obligation" towards them. However, another guest at the pension, an Anglican clergyman named Mr. Beebe, persuades the pair to accept the offer, assuring Miss Bartlett that Mr. Emerson only meant to be kind. In some editions, an appendix to the novel is given entitled "A View without a Room," written by Forster in 1958 as to what occurred between Lucy and George after the events of the novel. It is Forster\'s afterthought of the novel, and he quite clearly states that "I cannot think where George and Lucy live." They were quite comfortable up until the end of World War I, with Charlotte Bartlett leaving them all her money in her will, but the war ruined their happiness according to Forster. George became a conscientious objector, lost his government job but was given non-combatant duties to avoid prison, leaving Mrs Honeychurch deeply upset with her son-in-law. Mr Emerson died during the course of the war, shortly after having an argument with the police about Lucy continuing to play Beethoven (a German composer) on the piano during the war. Eventually they had three children, two girls and a boy, and moved to Carshalton from Highgate to find a home. Despite their wanting to move into Windy Corner after the death of Mrs Honeychurch, Freddy sold the house to support his family as he was "an unsuccessful but prolific doctor."

After seeing his friend Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge for the first time in years, author Jeremy Garnet is dragged along on holiday to Ukridge\'s new chicken farm in Dorset. Hilarious situations abound with Garnet\'s troublesome courting of a girl living nearby and the struggles on the farm, which are worsened by Ukridge\'s bizarre business ideas and methods.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers – the jokes seem fresh and witty even today. The three men are based on Jerome himself and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who would become a senior manager at Barclays Bank) and Carl Hentschel (the founder of a London printing business, called Harris in the book), with whom J. often took boating trips. The dog, Montmorency, is entirely fictional but, "as Jerome admits, developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog." The trip is a typical boating holiday of the time in a Thames camping skiff. This was just after commercial boat traffic on the Upper Thames had died out, replaced by the 1880s craze for boating as a leisure activity.

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Excerpt: ...evening it had disappeared behind a prominent headland far up a valley farther to the south, and probably had there gone into camp for the night. Late this night they get the news that gives rise to vast speculation and some genuine anxiety. Runners come in who say that instead of camping there, the White Chief rode all night; turned northward soon as it was dark; crossed this very valley far above them at dawn, and where he went from there they couldn\'t say. They dare not follow. Was it possible the White Chief was going to beat them at their own tactics? Could it be that he was going to head them off? Attack them in the early morning far to the northwest? Lying on the ground, the officers heard many hoof-beats dying away in the distance, and wondered what it might mean. It meant that some fifty of their foemen had galloped away to look for their families and the rest of the band, and warn them of the new danger. It was more than certain that no help could come to the soldiers in the Pg 225 valley; but they must guard their people against this mysterious move. At daybreak those left behind would resume the effort to dislodge the soldiers, and then there would be a revel. And daybreak comes all too soon. Far to the east the stars are paling, and a grayish veil rises slowly from the horizon. One by one the night-lamps in the heavens lose their sparkle and radiance, as the filament of the dawn shrouds and stifles them. Far down the valley tumbling outlines of ridge and height are carved out in sharper relief against the lightening sky. There is a stir in the leaves o\'erhead and the soft rustle of the morning breeze. Presently the pallid veil at the east takes on a purplish blush, that is changing every instant to a ruddier hue. Faces are beginning to be dimly visible in the groups of defenders, pinched and drawn and cold in the nipping air, and Wayne notes with a half sob how blue poor Dana\'s lips are. The boy\'s thoughts are far away. Is he...

Popular western fiction, written by William S. Hart, one of the first great stars of the motion picture western. "There was no doubt that affairs were rather dull on the Bar O Ranch; at least they seemed so to "Whitey," otherwise Alan Sherwood. Since he and his pal, "Injun," had had the adventures incidental to the finding of the gold in the mountains, there had been nothing doing. So life seemed tame to Whitey, to whom so many exciting things had happened since he had come West that he now had a taste for excitement. It was Saturday, so there were no lessons, and it was a relief to be free from the teachings of John Big Moose, the educated Dakota, who acted as tutor for Injun and Whitey. Not that John was impatient with his pupils. He was too patient, if anything, his own boyhood not being so far behind him that he had forgotten that outdoors, in the Golden West, is apt to prove more interesting to fifteen-year-old youth than printed books--especially when one half the class is of Indian blood."

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.

William MacLeod Raine was an American author who wrote classic adventure novels about the Wild West.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless 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.

A "rough and ready" western story which moves briskly. Wunpost is a prospector so credulous and ignorant that he makes a mining contract without reading the fine print. The first loss to a rascally grubstaker develops revenge and shrewdness which in the end results in the ownership of a valuable claim. Also a pretty love story.

Dorothy on a Ranch By Evelyn Raymond

Hal G. Evarts Jr., a 49-year resident of La Jolla whose literary career spanned more than 50 years and included stints as a free-lance writer, journalist and novelist. In the early 1960s, he started writing adventure and mystery stories for young readers, including the popular "Big Foot." The American West was the theme of many of Evarts\' earlier novels, including "Colorado Crossing," "Man Without a Gun" and "The Sundown Kid."

Francis Bret Harte (August 25, 1836 – May 5, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. In a career spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, fiction, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. As he moved from California to the eastern U.S. to Europe, he incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories, but his Gold Rush tales have been most often reprinted, adapted, and admired.

Eva Wilder Brodhead (1870-1915) was an American novelist  and a short-story writer. Among her most popular works are: ‘One of the Visconti’; ‘Diana’s Livery’; ‘An Earthly Paragon’; ‘Bound in Shallows.’

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.