Introductory Note: Originally published in The Windsor Magazine and McClure's Magazine in 1898, “Stalky” was the first of several boys' stories to revolve around three schoolboys—Corkran, McTurk, and Beetle. While this tale was not compiled in Kipling’s later…

Introductory Note: “The Story of Prince Peechiperl and the Devil-Doctor” is an example of boys’ adventure fiction, typical of the literature in this volume of Beeton’s Fact, Fiction, History, and Adventure. Written for a readership fascinated with the exotic…

Introductory Note: Considering the value Victorian culture gave to classical knowledge, it is fitting that this children’s story recounts a famous battle in ancient Greek history. In 480 BC, Xerxes, the king of Persia, attempted to invade Greece with an army…

Introductory Note: As one article in a series of “Classic Tales” in The Man in the Moon, “The Story of Narcissus” narrates the classical Greek myth of a beautiful man who falls in love with his own reflection. Yet this version recounts the story with an important…

NOTES: The following story appeared in the New York Sun in 1844. Although it looked like a real story, it was completely ficticious, created entirely from Poe's imagination. The story caused such excitement that a huge crowd gathered in front of the New York…

Introductory Note: “Paradise Lost” is a good example of the diverse content published in Dickens' journal, Household Words, which ranged from short stories and poems to news articles and histories. This story deals with two of the big issues of the day: the…

Introductory Note: The Christian short story “Why Mabel Altered Her Will” appears sequentially in issues I - V of the 1884 volume of the children’s magazine, The Prize. Because of its young audience and religious content, “Why Mabel Altered Her Will” fits…

Introductory Note: The Christian short story “Why Mabel Altered Her Will” appears sequentially in issues I - V of the 1884 volume of the children’s magazine, The Prize. Because of its young audience and religious content, “Why Mabel Altered Her Will” fits…

Introductory Note: The Christian short story “Why Mabel Altered Her Will” appears sequentially in issues I - V of the 1884 volume of the children’s magazine, The Prize. Because of its young audience and religious content, “Why Mabel Altered Her Will” fits…

Introductory Note: The Christian short story “Why Mabel Altered Her Will” appears sequentially in issues I - V of the 1884 volume of the children’s magazine, The Prize. Because of its young audience and religious content, “Why Mabel Altered Her Will” fits…

Introductory Note: The Christian short story “Why Mabel Altered Her Will” appears sequentially in issues I - V of the 1884 volume of the children’s magazine, The Prize. Because of its young audience and religious content, “Why Mabel Altered Her Will” fits…

Introductory Note: “Blind Love” follows the romance of a knight and a princess, cursed by a fairy to be forever invisible unless she “plays the wanton,” or scandalously loses her virginity. This fairy tale explores a woman’s responsibility to maintain her…

The procession came in sight in the hollow road which was shaded by the tall trees which grew on the slopes of the farm. The newly-married couple came first, then the relations, then the invited guests, and lastly the poor of the neighborhood while the village…

 "A trust is its weakest point," said Jeff Peters.    "That," said I, "sounds like one of those unintelligible remarks such as, 'Why is a policeman? "    "It is not," said Jeff. "There are no relations between a trust and a policeman. My remark was an epitogram—an…

    Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem,     curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas.                                                                 --Ebn Zaiat. MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the…

 I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen—an unusually smart child, I thought at the time. It was then that I did my first newspaper scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it stirred up a fine sensation in the community. It did, indeed, and I was…

  The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are clearly defined, and act consistently. Nature, always inartistic, takes pleasure in creating the impossible. Reginald Blake was as typical a specimen of the well-bred cad as one could hope…

“Sunday,——— “You do not write to me, I never see you, you never come, so I must suppose that you have ceased to love me. But why? What have I done? Pray tell me, my own dear love. I love you so much, so dearly! I should like always to have you near me, to…

 Jeff Peters has been engaged in as many schemes for making money as there are recipes for cooking rice in Charleston, S.C.    Best of all I like to hear him tell of his earlier days when he sold liniments and cough cures on street corners, living hand to…

    FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not -- and very surely do I not dream.…