When Julius Caesar arrives in Egypt and finds Cleopatra in hiding, he encourages her to return to the palace and embrace her role as queen. Shaw depicts an unlikely pair that bond over a common goal. As Roman forces invade Egypt, Julius Caesar stumbles across a young Cleopatra hiding amongst the statues. He initially conceals his identity, as the queen expresses concern over Caesar and his impending army. When he convinces her to return to the...

The experiences related in this volume fell to me in the summer of 1902. I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of those who had not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone before. Further, I took with me certain simple criteria with which to measure the life of the under-world.

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Restless Classics presents the ninetieth anniversary edition of an undersung gem of the Harlem Renaissance: Nella Larsen's Passing, a captivating and prescient exploration of identity, sexuality, self-invention, class, and race set amidst the pealing boisterousness of the Jazz Age. When childhood friends Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry cross paths at a whites-only restaurant, it's been decades since they last met. Married to a bigoted white man who...

A collection of poems. 1 STRAY birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away. And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall there with a sigh. 2 O TROUPE of little vagrants of the world, leave your footprints in my words. 3 THE world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover. It becomes small as one song, as one kiss of the eternal. 4 IT is the tears of the earth that keep her smiles in bloom....

Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887) is a book by American investigative journalist Nellie Bly. For her first assignment for Joseph Pulitzer's famed New York World newspaper, Bly went undercover as a patient at a notorious insane asylum on Blackwell's Island. Spending ten days there, she recorded the abuses and neglect she witnessed, turning her research into a sensational two-part story for the New York World later published as Ten Days in a Mad-House. Checking...

During the catastrophic economic depression of the 1890s, young Jack London found himself in the same situation as many others-homeless and unemployed. After a failed American investment and crop failure, the nation found itself in a panic. As London recounts these times, he tells stories of hopping on freight trains, consequently being forcefully removed. While living as a hobo, London often had to beg for food and money, and frequently found himself...

A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912) is a poetry collection by Amy Lowell. Published at the beginning of her career as an influential imagist devoted to classical poetic themes and forms, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass is an agile and promising work from a pioneering poet of the early twentieth century. Containing lyric poems, sonnets, verses for children, and a masterful long poem, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass is a vibrant collection from an emerging...

Old Indian Legends (1901) is a collection of traditional stories from Yankton Dakota writer Zitkála-Šá. Published while Zitkála-Šá was just beginning her career as an artist and activist, Old Indian Legends collects fourteen traditional legends and stories passed down through Sioux oral tradition. Intending to keep the stories or her people alive, Zitkála-Šá popularized and protected these cultural treasures for generations to come. In "Iktomi...

Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911) is a poetry collection by Sara Teasdale. The poet's second collection, published several years before she was awarded the 1918 Pulitzer Prize, is a masterful collection of lyric poems meditating on life, romance, and the natural world. Somber and celebratory, symbolic and grounded in experience, Helen of Troy and Other Poems revels in the mystery of existence itself. "Wild flight on flight against the fading dawn...

What would happen if Marcus Garvey had achieved his dreams by force? Satirizing of one of the most influential figures of twentieth century Black America, George S. Schuyler's Black Empire is a remarkable look into the complicated politics of race and class. After witnessing a murder in Harlem, the promising young Black journalist, Carl Slater, is kidnapped by the incredibly charismatic but deranged Dr. Belsidus. Having secretly formed a Black Internationale,...