Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
(More than one. Several.)
These works contain various authors. Usually, this is because they are anthologies — primarily of short stories. Sometimes the authors are collected because of a similar trait or because they have written thematically similar stories.
Various is a book author.
You can view all authors, or you can search by language/region, genre, era/movement, editor/translator, or year of edition.
n many ways, the collection met my expectations. It includes a lot of interesting ephemera from literature, some traditional Christmas classics, as well as excerpts from letters, newspaper items, and a substantial amount of poetry.
What really shines about this collection is the informative introductions to each and every one of the stories.
According to Google, a revenge tragedy is: A style of drama, popular in England during the late 16th and 17th centuries, in which the basic plot was a quest for vengeance and which typically featured scenes of carnage and mutilation.
The Harlem Renaissance is a literary moment that is vital to study but it can be hard to determine where to start. The movement is lush and complex with many different facets that aren’t limited to literature alone.
Any anthology usually ends up being a mixed bag in terms of content. There will be things you like and things you don’t. When a famous artist, writer, or illustrator that you admire is asked to select stories for an anthology it can be an extra special experience.
There’s nothing quite comparable to the experience of reading transcripts and re-printings of primary documents. To read a trial transcript from two hundred years ago and hear the echoes of words spoken so long ago by innocent women accused of crimes that are literally impossible to commit is something powerful and weighty.
I saw the Oxford World’s Classics French Decadent Tales sitting on my local independent bookstore’s shelf and I got so excited. French Decadence was a movement that did so much to further the form of the short story in general, but it also has all of those dark stories to tell at twilight that I can’t get enough of.
The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories sticks to a formula that’s pretty hard to get wrong. They take a theme and collect a bunch of stories from classic authors to compose an anthology.
Don’t Read This! features scary stories from authors of diverse backgrounds from Zimbabwe to Japan to Spain. The stories strike many different notes as well from very scary to nearly humorous.
Before reading this, I had the idea that most exorcisms across time were performed because of a lack of understanding concerning mental illness and — of course — rampant sexism, racism, and other prejudice.
