Setting out with the simple goal of offering 'American households a mass of good reading', the editors drew from literature of all times and all kinds what they considered the best pieces of human writing, and compiled an ambitious collection of 45 volumes (with a 46th being an index-guide).

The Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, is a work of enormous proportions. Genre(s): Social Science (Culture & Anthropology) Summary by Book Introduction and David Wales

This recording adds their descriptions at the end of each chapter. For the next twenty-five years, Hayes worked in China, mostly with the YMCA. The son of American missionaries, Luther Newton Hayes was born in 1883, in Soochow, China. The author’s acquaintance with the people and the language of China have made it possible for him to go to original sources and to study the subject from every angle. In this time, he has traveled over more than one half the number of provinces of China….

He has been studying on the subject of the dragon for fourteen years. Thus, he has had the first-hand knowledge and the language to help him in his study. He was born in China and speaks the Chinese language as a native. The author is peculiarly fitted to undertake this piece of work. The dragon has played a large part in Chinese thought through four thousand and more years…. The subject of this little book is of general interest to people who are acquainted with things Chinese. Genre(s): Literary Fiction, Published 1900 onward Some observers see in Harmer John a parallel to Francis of Assisi, that is, a naïve holy man opposed by the selfish worldliness around him. In an earlier story Walpole novelized the Francis Thompson poem The Hound Of Heaven about a fearful soul pursued by an insistently loving God. Harmer John encounters xenophobia, jealousy, and malice. But not everyone shares his vision, especially the slumlords who make their money by renting the slum to those who are poor and vulnerable, those unable to afford anything better. He envisions tearing down the slums along the river and rebuilding the area with more attractive and publicly healthier buildings. He establishes a business, essentially a gymnasium, to help people become healthier. He has a vision of transforming the town and its populace to a healthier and more beautiful state. He is attracted to Polchester by the cathedral. His name is “simplified” by the townsfolk to Harmer John. Hjalmar Johanson (novel, 1926) is a boyish unworldly Swedish body builder come to Walpole’s fictional cathedral town of Polchester.

Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs