Books with author Alex Struik

Der Ling (whose Christian name was Elisabeth Antoinette), was born in Beijing in June 1885 and died in Berkeley, California in November 1944. She was a Manchu, the daughter of Yu Keng. Yu Keng was a member of the Manchu Plain White Banner Corps. After serving as Chinese Minister to Japan he was appointed Minister to the French Third Republic for four years in 1899. He was known for his progressive, reformist views, as well as his firm support of the Empress Dowager Cixi (29 November 1835 – 15 November 1908). Yu Keng's daughters Der Ling and Rong Ling (1882–1973) received a Western education, and studied dance in Paris with Isadora Duncan. Upon her return from France in 1903, Der Ling became the First Lady-in-Waiting and translator to Empress Dowager Cixi . She stayed at court until March 1905. This book appeared in 1911, just before the fall of the Qing Dynasty and chronicles Imperial life in the Forbidden City from a now disappeared age.

George Alfred Henty (8 December 1832 – 16 November 1902), was a prolific English novelist and a special correspondent. He is best known for his historical adventure stories that were popular in the late 19th century. His other works include The Dragon & The Raven (1886), For The Temple (1888), Under Drake's Flag (1883) and In Freedom's Cause (1885). Henty's heroes – which occasionally included young ladies – are uniformly intelligent, courageous, honest and resourceful with plenty of 'pluck' yet are also modest. On the Irawaddy tells the story of British adventure on the great Irawaddy River in Burma during the 19th century, the time of the First Anglo-Burmese War.

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas's wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the victorious Trojan war on the Latins. Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. Virgil is traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets. His Aeneid has been considered the national epic of ancient Rome from the time of its writing to the present day.

Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. Aesop was a story teller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. In many of the tales, animals speak and have human characteristics. Scattered details of Aesop's life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states.

Beasts and Super-Beasts is a collection of short stories, written by Saki and first published in 1914. The title parodies that of George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman. Along with The Chronicles of Clovis, Beasts and Super-Beasts is one of Saki's best-known works. It was his final collection of stories before his death in World War I, and several of its stories, in particular "The Open Window", are reprinted frequently in anthologies. Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 13 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, and Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward, and P. G. Wodehouse.