The Cliff

Fully entitled "Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty," this novel was Dickens' first attempt at a historical novel. As such, it is the precursor to his more famous "A Tale of Two Cities", in which his exploration of mob violence, and especially the effect of public events on individual lives, becomes apparent. This work centers on Barnaby Rudge, a mentally simple son, and his loving mother, who are a part of the small village of Epping Forest,...

Lincoln's connection to black history may go much further than his role in slavery. In the 2001 book 'Black People and Their Place in History', historian Leroy Vaughn, alleges that Lincoln's father was African American and his mother had Ethiopian ethnicity, both of which may have explained his "very dark skin and coarse hair." The fact is his rivals campaigned using propaganda that depicted Lincoln as "Abraham Africanus the First," an African man. It...

When a Swiss couple and their four sons are shipwrecked on an isolated island, they adapt to their "New Switzerland" using many imaginative methods of farming and animal taming.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is the first novel in a series of historical fiction by Baroness Orczy set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution, first published in 1905. The novel was written after Orczy's stage play of the same title enjoyed a long run in London and popular success earlier in 1905, after a first run in Nottingham in 1903. The Scarlet Pimpernel is the name of a chivalrous Englishman, Sir Percy Blakeney, in...

Candide is characterized by its tone as well as by its erratic, fantastical, and fast-moving plot. A picaresque novel with a story similar to that of a more serious coming-of-age narrative, it parodies many adventure and romance clichés, the struggles of which are caricatured in a tone that is bitter and matter-of-fact. Still, the events discussed are often based on historical happenings, such as the Seven Years' War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake....

The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain Charles Dickens - The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, A Fancy for Christmas-Time (better known as The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain or simply as The Haunted Man) is a novella by Charles Dickens first published in 1848. It is the fifth and last of Dickens's Christmas novellas. The story is more about the spirit of Christmas than about the holiday itself, harking back to the first in the series, A Christmas...

Walt Whitman's "The Wound-Dresser" is a sixty-five-line free-verse poem in four sections describing the suffering in the Civil War hospitals and the poet's suffering, faithfulness to duty, and developing compassion as he tended to soldiers' physical wounds and gave comfort. Published at war's end, the poem opens with an old veteran speaking, imaginatively suggesting some youths gathered about who have asked him to tell of his most powerful memories....

"The government claimed they had recovered a UFO - they had a press release about it, No other government in the world has said 'We have a spacecraft,' and then the next day there's another press release that says, 'Never mind, it was just a weather balloon'," Ben Smith, former CIA operative In 1947, something crashed outside of Roswell, New Mexico and was brought to Roswell Army Air Field by Army officers. Since then, there have been many a discussion...

Themes of love between people of the same gender are found in a variety of texts throughout the world. The Greeks explored the theme on different levels in works such as Plato's. Religious narratives include stories of sexuality between men or feature divine actions that result in changes in gender. These myths too are forms of LGBTQ expression and modern conceptions of sexuality and gender. Myths to have been used by to explain the "cause" of transgender...

"I cannot live without books." "Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you." "I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United...