Showing posts with label England. Show all posts
Showing posts with label England. Show all posts
Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles - classic fiction
Why Poirot doe only show once in the top best books list from all the 87 times his character appeared in stories?
About this book:
The
Mysterious Affair at Styles is a detective novel by Agatha Christie.
It was written in the middle of World War I, in 1916, and first
published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920.
Styles was
Christie's first published novel, introducing Hercule Poirot,
InspectorJapp, and Arthur Hastings. Poirot is described as "a
dear little man", "an extraordinary looking little man"
and a "quaint dandyfied little man".
The novel
is set in England at Styles Court, an Essex country manor (also the
setting of Curtain, Poirot's last case). Upon her husband's death,
the wealthy widow, Emily Cavendish, inherited a life estate in Styles
as well as the outright inheritance of the larger part of the late Mr
Cavendish's income. Mrs Cavendish became Mrs Inglethorp upon her
recent remarriage to a much younger man, Alfred Inglethorp. Emily's
two stepsons, John and Lawrence Cavendish, as well as John's wife
Mary and several other people, also live at Styles. John Cavendish is
the vested remainderman of Styles; that is, the property will pass to
him automatically upon his stepmother's decease, as per his late
father's will. Lawrence Cavendish would also come into a considerable
sum of money. The income left to Mrs Inglethorp by her late husband
would be distributed according to Mrs Inglethorp's own will, which
she changed at least once per year. If she had not changed her will
since her marriage this would go to her husband.
Late one
night, the residents of Styles wake to find Emily Inglethorp dying of
what proves to be strychnine poisoning. Hastings, a houseguest,
enlists the help of his friend Hercule Poirot, who is staying in the
nearby village, Styles St Mary. Poirot pieces together events
surrounding the murder. On the day she was killed, Mrs Inglethorp was
overheard arguing with someone, most likely either her husband,
Alfred, or her stepson, John. Afterwards, she seemed quite distressed
and, apparently, made a new will — which no one can find. She ate
little at dinner and retired early to her room with her document
case. The case was later forced open by someone and a document
removed. Alfred Inglethorp left Styles earlier in the evening and
stayed overnight in the nearby village, so was not present when the
poisoning occurred. No one knows exactly when or how the strychnine
was administered to Mrs Inglethorp... (source: Wikipedia)
About the author:
Dame Agatha
Mary Clarissa Christie, DBE (born Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12
January 1976) was an English crime writer of novels, short stories,
and plays. She also wrote six romances under the name Mary
Westmacott, but she is best remembered for the 66 detective novels
and more than 15 short story collections she wrote under her own
name, most of which revolve around the investigations of such
characters as Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple and Tommy and
Tuppence. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, The
Mousetrap. (source: Wikipedia)
About the Midwest Journal Writers' Club:
This
was created by popular request to enable any beginning or established
author to improve their skills by studying quality editions of
classic bestselling fiction. Join at http://midwestjournalpress.com
Related Sites
Review: "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" by Agatha Christie ... - In this first novel by Agatha Christie, published in 1920, she introduces the inimitable Poirot, who would go on to appear in 33 Christie novels and 54 short stories. The plot of The Mysterious Affair at Styles deals with a ...The Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction | Amicae Curiae - Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Entries have recently closed for the University of Alabama Law School, where Harper Lee studied law, and the American Bar ...
New on CD « Sidney Public Library - The Affair by Lee Child; The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie; The Eagle Catcher by Margaret Coel; Arctic Drift by Clive Cussler; Medusa by Clive Cussler; Mile 81 by Stephen King; War Horse by Morpurgo; Call ...
Monday contest: Win 10 terrific debut novels | The Book Case - 5 August 2013 at 2:36 pm. Gone With The Wind, for sure. Recently, Before I Go To Sleep. Reply. Elizabeth Bevins says: 5 August 2013 at 2:38 pm. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie is my favorite first novel.
Language Tips: Equable and equitable & people or persons ... - And finally, from Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1916), chapter 8: From your account, there are only two people whom we can positively say did not go near the coffee-Mrs. Cavendish, and Mademoiselle ...
Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility - classic fiction
Where misfortune and romance intertwine to produce popular emotional appeal
About this book:
Sense and Sensibility is a novel by Jane Austen, and
was her first published work when it appeared in 1811 under the
pseudonym "A Lady". A work of romantic fiction, Sense and
Sensibility is set in southwest England between 1792 and 1797, and
portrays the life and loves of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and
Marianne. The novel follows the young ladies to their new home, a
meagre cottage on a distant relative's property, where they
experience love, romance and heartbreak. The philosophical resolution
of the novel is ambiguous: the reader must decide whether sense and
sensibility have truly merged.
When Mr.
Dashwood dies, his estate, Norland Park, passes directly to his only
son John, the child of his first wife. His second wife, Mrs.
Dashwood, and their daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, are
left only a small income. On his deathbed, Mr. Dashwood extracts a
promise from his son, that he will take care of his half-sisters;
however, John's selfish and greedy wife, Fanny, soon persuades him to
renege. John and Fanny immediately take up their place as the new
owners of Norland, while the Dashwood women are reduced to the
position of unwelcome guests. Mrs. Dashwood begins looking for
somewhere else to live.
In the
meantime, Fanny's brother, Edward Ferrars, a pleasant, unassuming,
intelligent but reserved young man, visits Norland and soon forms an
attachment with Elinor. Fanny disapproves the match and offends Mrs.
Dashwood with the implication that Elinor is motivated by money
rather than love. Mrs. Dashwood indignantly speeds her search for a
new home.
Mrs.
Dashwood moves her family to Barton Cottage in Devonshire, near the
home of her cousin, Sir John Middleton. Their new home lacks many of
the conveniences that they have been used to, however they are warmly
received by Sir John, and welcomed into the local society, meeting
his wife, Lady Middleton, his mother-in-law, Mrs. Jennings and his
friend, the grave, quiet and gentlemanly Colonel Brandon. It soon
becomes apparent that Colonel Brandon is attracted to Marianne, and
Mrs. Jennings teases them about it. Marianne is not pleased as she
considers Colonel Brandon, at thirty-five, to be an old bachelor
incapable of falling in love, or inspiring love in anyone else.
Marianne,
out for a walk, gets caught in the rain, slips and sprains her ankle.
The dashing, handsome John Willoughby sees the accident and assists
her. Marianne quickly comes to admire his good looks and outspoken
views on poetry, music, art and love. Mr. Willoughby's attentions are
so overt that Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood begin to suspect that the
couple are secretly engaged... (source: Wikipedia)
About the author:
Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was
an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the
landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read
writers in English literature. Her realism, biting irony and social
commentary have gained her historical importance among scholars and
critics.
Austen's
works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the
18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism.
Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of
women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.
Her work brought her little personal fame and only a few positive
reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her
nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public,
and by the 1940s she had become widely accepted in academia as a
great English writer. (source: Wikipedia)
About the Midwest Journal Writers' Club:
This
was created by popular request to enable any beginning or established
author to improve their skills by studying quality editions of
classic bestselling fiction. Join at http://midwestjournalpress.com
Related Sites
werewolf » Zombie Love: Chewing on the Entrails of Genre - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is Austen spiced with a zombie sub-plot which seems to directly offset a specific aspect of Austen's writing: decorum and class; conversely Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters would, ...'Circuits of sense and sensibility' | Harvard Gazette - Harvard biologist traces neural circuits involved in worm learning | A Harvard biologist succeeds in mapping a neural network for learned olfactory behavior, using a roundworm model to trace the dislike of a particular smell to ...
Close Reading of Sense and Sensibility | General Incivility - For this post, I will analyze the conversation Marianne and Elinor have about Edward in Chapter 4 (Volume I). After Marianne implies that Edward and Elinor will soon be engaged, Elinor immediately gives Marianne a lengthy ...
Leah Price explains how immortalizing Caroline Bingley on a bank ... - Reading different volumes of the same novel gives Miss Bingley and Darcy something in common, just as anyone reading Sense and Sensibility can guess Marianne Dashwood's fate once she reflects that “Our own library is ...
Downton Abbey & Jane Austen; Or, in Praise of Lady Mary | Journal ... - For example, in both Downton Abbey and Sense and Sensibility, actor Dan Stevens plays characters who are trying to honor promises that are absolutely essential to women's livelihoods.[1] In the second season of Downton, ...
Class, Money, and Marriage in Pride and Prejudice | BritLit - Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, is one of the most loved novels ever written. It continues to be near the top of lists of 'most loved.
The Weight of the Albatross: Coleridge's - Blogs @ Baylor University - The Weight of the Albatross Coleridge, unbeknownst to most people, struggled for a large portion of his life with an.
bestsellers
,
book
,
classic fiction
,
England
,
Jane Austen
,
Lady
,
Mississippi River
,
publishing
,
Sense and Sensibility
,
writers' club
,
writing
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
Yet another classic fiction becomes a Midwest Journal Writers' Club Selection.
About
this book:
Heart of
Darkness (1899), by Joseph Conrad, is a short novel about Charles
Marlow’s job as an ivory transporter down the Congo River in
Central Africa. This river is described to be “... a mighty big
river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake
uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar
over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land.”
In the course of his commercial-agent work in Africa, the seaman
Marlow becomes obsessed by Mr. Kurtz, an ivory-procurement agent, a
man of established notoriety among the natives and the European
colonials.
Aboard the
Nellie, anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend, England, Charles
Marlow tells his fellow sailors about the events that led to his
appointment as captain of a river-steamboat for an ivory trading
company. He describes his passage on ships to the wilderness to the
Company's station, which strikes Marlow as a scene of devastation:
disorganized, machinery parts here and there, periodic demolition
explosions, weakened native black men who have been demoralized, in
chains, literally being worked to death, and strolling behind them a
white Company man in a uniform carrying a rifle.
Africa
,
Charles Marlow
,
classic fiction
,
Congo River
,
England
,
Heart of Darkness
,
Joseph Conrad
,
Kurtz
,
Marlow
,
novel
,
writers' club
,
writing
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)
Posts
