"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.

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.

Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza (circa 1540-1617) was the author of the first Western history of China to publish Chinese characters. Published by him in 1586, "Historia de las cosas mas notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China" is an account of observations several Spanish travelers in China. An English translation by Robert Parke appeared in 1588 and was reprinted by the Hakluyt Society in two volumes, edited by Sir George T. Staunton, Bart. (London, 1853-54).This is the first of those two volumes. Mendoza was born at Toledo. He joined the army but after some years resigned to enter the Order of Saint Augustine. He based his most famous text on the journals of Miguel de Luarca, whose 1580 trip to Ming China provided the material for his book. He never set foot in China, but spent two years in Mexico before returning to Spain. He was afterward Bishop of the Lipari Islands, of Chiapas, and of Popayan.

Richard Hakluyt (circa 1552/1553 - 23 November 1616) was an English writer. He is known for promoting the settlement of North America by the English through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (1582) and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation (1589-1600). Hakluyt was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. Between 1583 and 1588 he was chaplain and secretary to Sir Edward Stafford, English ambassador at the French court. An ordained priest, Hakluyt held important positions at Bristol Cathedral and Westminster Abbey and was personal chaplain to Sir Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, principal Secretary of State to Elizabeth I and James I. He was the chief promoter of a petition to James I for letters patent to colonize Virginia, which were granted to the London Company and Plymouth Company (referred to collectively as the Virginia Company) in 1606.

Bede (672 - 26 May 735), also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede, was an English monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow, both in the Kingdom of Northumbria. Bede's monastery had access to a superb library which included works by Eusebius and Orosius among many others. An author and scholar, his most famous work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title "The Father of English History." This work in Latin by Bede on the history of the Christian Churches in England, and of England generally; has as its main focus the conflict between Roman and Celtic Christianity. It is considered to be one of the most important original references on Anglo-Saxon history and has played a key role in the development of an English national identity. It is believed to have been completed in 731, when Bede was approximately 59 years old.

The Isle of Pines is a book by Henry Neville published in 1668. An example of Utopian fiction, the book presents its story through an Epistolary frame: a "Letter to a friend in London, declaring the truth of his Voyage to the East Indies" written by a fictional Dutchman "Henry Cornelius Van Sloetten," concerning the discovery of an island in the southern hemisphere, populated with the descendants of a small group of castaways. The book also has political overtones. Neville was an anti-Stuart republican, and as a political exile he was clearly conscious of the socio-political concerns of the end of the early modern period. The island narrative is framed by the story of the Dutch explorers who are more organized and better equipped than the English voyage of three generations earlier, and who are needed to rescue a small English colonial nation-state from chaos. It is interesting to note that the book was written at the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Henry Neville (1620-1694) was an English author and satirist, best remembered for his tale of shipwreck and dystopia, The Isle of Pines.