"Mare Liberum" is a book (originally written in Latin) on international law written by the Dutch jurist and philosopher Hugo Grotius. In Mare Liberum, Grotius formulated the new principle that the sea was international territory and all nations were free to use it for seafaring trade. The disputation was directed towards the Portuguese Mare Clausum policy and their claim of monopoly on the East Indian Trade. Grotius wrote the treatise while counsel to the Dutch East India Company over the seizure of the Portuguese carrack "Santa Catarina." Hugo Grotius (10 April 1583 - 28 August 1645), was a jurist in the Dutch Republic. With Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili he laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law. He was also a philosopher, theologian, Christian apologist, playwright, and poet.

"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Although the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains, Irving later admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills." Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 - November 28, 1859) was an American author, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle." His historical works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Christopher Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra. Irving served as the U.S. ambassador to Spain from 1842 to 1846.

The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), subtitled "The Life and Death of a Man of Character," is a tragic novel by British author Thomas Hardy. It is set in the fictional town of Casterbridge (based on the town of Dorchester in Dorset). The book is one of Hardy's Wessex novels, all set in a fictional rustic England. The novel is often considered one of Hardy's greatest works. Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 - 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, he was also influenced both in his novels and poetry by Romanticism, especially by William Wordsworth. Charles Dickens is another important influence on Thomas Hardy. Like Dickens, he was also highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society.

The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American novelist Jack London about a literary critic and survivor of an ocean collision, who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him. Its first printing of forty thousand copies were immediately sold out before publication on the strength of London's previous book "The Call of the Wild." John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 - November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the author of The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire," "An Odyssey of the North," and "Love of Life." He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen," and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf.

Tales of the Punjab is a collection of Indian short stories collected by Flora Annie Steel first published in 1894. Flora Annie Steel (2 April 1847 - 12 April 1929) was an English writer. She was the daughter of George Webster. In 1867 she married Henry William Steel, a member of the Indian civil service, and for the next twenty-two years lived in India, chiefly in the Punjab, with which most of her books are connected.

The Forsyte Saga is a series of three novels and two interludes (intervening episodes) published between 1906 and 1921 by Nobel Prize-winning English author John Galsworthy. They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of an upper middle-class British family, similar to Galsworthy's own. Only a few generations removed from their farmer ancestors, the family members are keenly aware of their status as "new money." The main character, Soames Forsyte, sees himself as a "man of property" by virtue of his ability to accumulate material possessions-but this does not succeed in bringing him pleasure. John Galsworthy (14 August 1867 - 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga (1906-1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932. This is Volume II of a three volume set.

The Forsyte Saga is a series of three novels and two interludes (intervening episodes) published between 1906 and 1921 by Nobel Prize-winning English author John Galsworthy. They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of an upper middle-class British family, similar to Galsworthy's own. Only a few generations removed from their farmer ancestors, the family members are keenly aware of their status as "new money." The main character, Soames Forsyte, sees himself as a "man of property" by virtue of his ability to accumulate material possessions-but this does not succeed in bringing him pleasure. John Galsworthy (14 August 1867 - 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga (1906-1921) and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932. This is Volume III of a three volume set.

The First Sino-Japanese War (1 August 1894 - 17 April 1895) was fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan, primarily over control of Korea. After more than six months of continuous successes by the Japanese army and naval forces, as well as the loss of the Chinese port of Weihai, the Qing leadership sued for peace in February 1895. In this fictionalized account, the adventures of the protagonist are set against the backdrop of the war between Japan and China. Henry Frith was an English writer of boys' adventure novels in the late 19th century.

A collection featuring two nautical adventure stories: "The Penang Pirate," describes how the Captain of the "Hankow Lin," suspecting that there might be a piratical attack on his vessel on her return voyage from Canton to Australia, lays plans to spoil the pirates' plans. "The Lost Pinnace." HMS London is cruising the East Coast of Africa in search of any slaver dhows. One of these is met with and destroyed, then a midshipman with knowledge of the local language overhears that there is a second slaver not far away, so the London warship sets off in search of further conquest. John Conroy Hutcheson (1840- 1897) was a British author of novels and short stories about life aboard ships at sea. Hutcheson was born in Jersey, Channel Islands, in 1840, and died in Portsea Island, in late 1896 or early 1897.

Apollonius of Tyana (circa 15-100 CE) was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Being a 1st-century orator and philosopher around the time of Christ, he was compared with Jesus of Nazareth by Christians in the 4th century and by various popular writers in modern times. Apollonius was born into a respected and wealthy Greek family. George Robert Stowe Mead (Nuneaton, 22 March 1863-28 September 1933) was an English author, editor, translator, and an influential member of the Theosophical Society as well as the founder of the Quest Society.

An introduction to the knowledge of practical botany and the uses of plants either growing wild in Great Britain, or cultivated for the purposes of agriculture, medicine, rural economy, or the arts. First published in 1816 and written by William Salisbury while working at the Botanic Garden on Sloane Street, London.

Arnold Henry Savage Landor (1865 - 26 December 1924) was an English painter, explorer, writer and anthropologist, born in Florence. Landor then went to Vancouver where, aged 27 in 1889, he embarked for Yokohama, Japan. In the course of this visit to Japan made a journey to the largely unexplored Island of Hokkaido, where he studied the customs of the indigenous Ainu people. He made several paintings and subsequently wrote Alone with the Hairy Ainu (1893).