Frederick Davidson

Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) is a novel by English author E.M. Forster. The work was Forster's first novel, and its success helped launch his lengthy and critically acclaimed career as a writer of literary fiction. Where Angels Fear to Tread, the title is drawn from Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism (1711), is a moving meditation on class, gender, social convention, and the grieving process. Following the death of her husband, a widow named...

When dystopian futures don't feel so future at all…Four decades before George Orwell wrote 1984, The Napoleon of Notting Hill defined the dystopian genre. One of the first dystopian comedies, instead of a dark vision of jackboots and surveillance states, G.K. Chesterton explores the question of what a society would look like if no one could take a joke.In this future England, each new king is decided by lottery. When Auberon Quin, a man who cares...

Arthur Conan Doyle's His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes(1917) is an outstanding collection of some of the later stories and most dramatic exploits of Detective Holmes and Dr. Watson. These stories were composed between 1908 and 1917, with the exception of the infamous tale "The Cardboard Box", which was written in 1893. Six of these adventures were initially published The Strand magazine, and the final titular story was published...

Featuring ten works of comedic short fiction, P.G Wodehouse's The Clicking of Cuthbert is comprised of stories about golfers that teach a lesson is an odd and amusing way. In A Woman is Only a Woman, the friendship between two men is threatened when they both fall in love with the same woman. Since she claims to like them equally, the two men decide to challenge each other to a game of golf, agreeing that the best golfer gets the woman's hand in marriage....

A comic crime caper from the popular and prolific twentieth-century author of the Jeeves novels featuring Bertie Wooster. When Ogden Ford, the chubby son of a divorced American millionaire, arrives at a posh English prep school, he sets in motion a dastardly plot. There's a new classics teacher at the school who's not who he purports to be ... The schoolmaster in training, Peter Burns, is really working for Ogden's mother, who wants her son back...

The Moon and Sixpence (1919) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Inspired by the life of French painter Paul Gauguin, Maugham set out to capture, the disconnect between an artist's desire, to create and their obligations to their loved ones and society. Praised for its multifaceted portrayal of tortured genius and wasted talent, The Moon and Sixpence explores the distance between expectation and desire in a man whose decisions, however, hastily made,...

While they are discussing the possible illnesses they may have, Jerome, Harris, and George all realize they suffer from the same thing-working too much. Upon the realization, the three best friends decide that they must go on a vacation. After rejecting the ideas of a sea trip or country stay, because Jerome doesn't like the sea, and Harris finds the country to be dull, the men decide on a boat trip. With their bags packed and with the company of...

The Coming of Bill (1919) is the story of Kirk Winfield, an aspiring artist, and his marriage to wealthy heiress Ruth Bannister. Ruth's strong-willed aunt, Mrs. Lora Delane Porter, is a proponent of eugenics and upon the birth of the couple's first child takes an active role in his upbringing. Bill sets out on a dangerous mission to South American in hopes of improving the family's finances, but returns to find his home quite different from how he...

The renowned Scottish poet and folklorist recounts the Homeric legends of the Trojan War, the wanderings of Ulysses, and more. Andrew Lang was one of the most accomplished poets and literary scholars of thenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. His classic collections of fairy tales have been enjoyed by generations of young readers. In Tales of Troy and Greece, he brings the same nuanced yet accessible style to the stories of Ancient Greek heroes,...

This 1896 novel, first published serially in the Illustrated London News, is a murder mystery with a twist—the callous crime goes unpunished, though not undiscovered. James is less interested in a game of cat-and-mouse than in exploring the psychological motivations of his characters.