Books published by publisher A Word To The Wise

Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South is the story of Margaret Hale, the daughter of a local priest in Hampshire, whose father decides to leave his country church after a serious crisis of faith. All the events that follow happen in the fictional industrial English town named Milton to which the Hale family has moved. Thus, part of the narrative focuses on the juxtaposition between industrial areas and the countryside. Margaret is very critical of the massive industrialization swallowing English rural landscapes and the whole family is disgusted with the dirt and pollution caused by the mushrooming mills and factories. However, Margaret soon starts to like her stay in Milton, especially after making friends among the mill workers and owners of the town. Her father, Mr. Hale, now works as a tutor and one of his pupils, Mr. Thornton, becomes interested in Margaret. However, Thornton, who is a wealthy mill-owner, is often criticized by Margaret for the way he treats his employees. When one day his workers organize a strike, she advises him to go and negotiate with the mob. He is nearly attacked by them when she interferes to be hit herself. The incident has just intensified Thornton’s love for Margaret and after some ups and downs, they finally decide to get married.

The Marvelous Land of Oz: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, has frequently been shortened to The Land of Oz and was published in July 1904. The second book in the series it and the story centers on a young boy named Tip who with Jack Pumpkinhead who has been brought to life with the magic ‘Powder of Life’ and the Sawhorse help The Scarecrow after he flees the Emerald City.

Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is one of the earliest and most seminal satirical essays written in English. Having as an original title “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick,” it expresses deep anger at the squalor and miserable conditions from which the Irish people was suffering in the eighteenth century. Swift ironically suggests that poor Irish families could sell their children to rich Englishmen as an ultimate solution to their miseries. The essay, which is generally characterized by a rather bitter, ironic and hyperbolic tone , provides details of how to convert the problem that Irish children represent into its own solution. He even dares to propose selling those children to meat markets to be served as food for the rich. He ironically gives a complete analysis about how this weird solution would help combat unemployment and overpopulation and boost the country’s economy. What is worth noting, however, is that Swift does not put all the burden on the shoulders of English rulers, rich men and Irish politicians. Indeed, the essay also represents a work of self-criticism where the Irish masses are equally blamed for not being able to help themselves.

The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzō was written in 1906. Essentially it is a long essay linking the role of tea (teaism) to the aesthetic and cultural aspects of Japanese life. Okakura had been taught English from a very young age so was very adept at writing in English to a Western audience. In The book of Tea, one of the great English tea classics, he discusses such topics as Zen and Taoism, but also the secular aspects of tea and Japanese life. The book emphasizes how Teaism taught the Japanese many things; most importantly, simplicity. Kakuzō argues that this tea-induced simplicity affected art and architecture. It’s a fascinating cultural gem.

Khalil Gibran was one of a number of Arab intellectuals and writers who lived in the United States in the beginning of the twentieth century and who had a great influence on the development of modern Arabic literature through the exploration of Western literary movements. The group was presided by Khalil himself and was baptized Arrabitah, or “The League.” Generally, the Arabic literature of the beginning of the twentieth century was marked by the revolutionary ideas advanced by Arrabitah members as well as by other Arab intellectuals and literary men who felt the urgent need to revolutionize classic Arabic verse and prose. It was a growing urge to innovate and to break with old literary traditions and conventions. The current eventually helped to open new horizons such as the flourishing, in the second half of the twentieth century, of Arabic prose poetry and free verse. The Arrabitah experience was, actually, fundamental in the life of Khalil Gibran who was regarded as a literary rebel and a leading figure of the Arabic literary Renaissance in addition to his Oriental contributions to Western poetry and thought. Here we publish ‘A Tear And A Smile’.

Thornton Waldo Burgess, born on January 14th, 1874 in Sandwich, Massachusetts, was the author of a great many children’s classics including this wonderful volume of The Adventures Of Reddy Fox. A conservationist he loved the raw, wild beauty of the natural world, writing about it for half a century in books and his newspaper column. During his lifetime he wrote over 170 books and 15,000 daily newspaper columns. That’s quite an output by anybody’s standards. Indeed his column ‘Bedtime Stories’ earned him the moniker ‘Bedtime Story Man’

Madame Bovary (1856) is the French novelist Gustave Flaubert’s much-celebrated masterpiece that has been translated into more than forty languages in the world. It belongs to the realistic movement of fiction and has often been considered by critics as one of its most important foundational works. The book recounts the life story of Charles Bovary, a young man from northern France who has been brought up by his mother to become rather a simpleton. Charles is trained to be a medical doctor and then starts practicing his job. He first marries an elder woman that his mother chooses for him. While being married, he has an acquaintance with a beautiful young woman named Emma with whom he falls in love. He is given the opportunity to get closer to Emma and marry her after the death of his first wife. The story then becomes entirely focused on the character of Emma who soon gets bored of her marital status and starts to look for extramarital relations. She indulges in sexual adventures with two different partners while her husband never suspects anything. She even unsuccessfully attempts to elope with one of her lovers once. Madame Bovary commits suicide by the end of the narrative after having drowned herself in irredeemable debt. Charles, who cherishes her memory, discovers about her cheating only later and still tries to find her excuses before he dies himself.

In this volume we venture to the East. To met a writer who speaks a common language of love and mysticism which continues to convey valuable insights into universal themes in contemporary society. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) who was a gifted Bengali Renaissance man, distinguishing himself as a philosopher, social and political reformer and a popular author in all literary genres. He was instrumental in an increased freedom for the press and influenced Gandhi and the founders of modern India. He composed hundreds of songs which are still sung today as they include the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems. His prolific literary life has left a legacy of quality novels, essays, poems and in this volume one of his plays. He earned the distinction of being the first Asian writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Many of his poems are also available as an audiobook from our sister company Portable Poetry as well as ebooks of stories and essays. Many samples are at our youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/PortablePoetry?feature=mhee The full volume of poems can be purchased from iTunes, Amazon and other digital stores. Among our readers are Shyama Perera and Ghizela Rowe

How to Live on Twenty Four Hours a Day is a classic of self-improvement by Arnold Bennett published in 1910. Although the book is more than one century old, the practical advice and the inspirational ideas that it provides have become much pertinent to twenty-first-century concerns since today most people find themselves in a fatal combat with time. The volume is divided into a number of chapters, each of which offers a series of tips to be followed in order to get the best of one’s twenty four hours and to “live” rather than just “exist.” What has made modern people feel enslaved to time, according to Bennett, is the way the Industrial Revolution has mechanized their lifestyle. They have become like machines reiterating the same things for years and even decades so that they have lost the taste of life. Bennett gives solutions to these modern problems, solution of how to save time and enjoy it, solutions of how to make use of one’s existence. Literature, the arts, history and philosophy are among the tools that help achieve such a goal. For Bennett, one has to keep on reminding himself that time is often more precious than money.

Born in 1797, Mary Shelley’s mother died when she was only 11 days old. Mary was then raised by her Father, who remarried when she was four, and thereafter the young Mary had a liberal but informal upbringing. At 17 she began the relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley which was the bedrock of her life; although society viewed the unmarrieds somewhat differently. It was in this relationship that she nurtured and edited Shelley’s verse and wrote, at 21, her signature work "Frankenstein” for which she is so well known. Her husband drowned when she was 25 which added further to the earlier loss of 3 of her 4 children. Beset with such great tragedy her life remained to be fulfilled but, at only 53, a brain tumour was to take her own life. However she left behind a wonderful collection of works of which The fortune Of Perkin Warbeck is a rich and textured part.