Books with title A house-boat on the Styx

The premise of the book is that everyone who has ever died (up to the time in which the book is set, which seems to be about the time of its publication) has gone to Styx, the river that circles the underworld.The book begins with Charon, ferryman of the Styx being startled—and annoyed—by the arrival of a houseboat on the Styx. At first afraid that the boat will put him out of business, he later finds out that he is actually to be appointed the boat's janitor.What follows are eleven more stories (for a total of twelve) which are set on the house boat. There is no central theme, and the purpose of the book appears to be as a literary thought experiment to see what would happen if various famous dead people were put in the same room with each other. Each chapter is a short story featuring various souls from history and mythology. In the twelfth chapter the house boat disappears, leading into the sequel, The Pursuit of the House-Boat.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Written in 1895, A House-Boat on the Styx is a fantasy novel by John Kendrick Bangs. Based on the works of Dante, Homer and Vergil, the book takes the reader to the afterworld populated by the greatest men in history who spend time together on a luxury boat on the river Styx, the water that divides the land of the living from the land of the dead.The novel starts by introducing one of the most important figures in Greek mythology, Charon, the boatman who takes the souls of the dead across the river to the land they will be living in forever, to the underworld. He is startled by the appearance of a house-boat. At first, he is concerned that the boat is there to put him out of business, but later on he accepts a job offer to work as the boat’s janitor. The book then continues with eleven more stories, each of which featuring one of the men on the boat, all well-known historical or literary characters. The company of illustrious gentlemen includes members such as Napoleon, George Washington, Mark Twain, Kipling, William Shakespeare and Baron Munchausen and is presided by Sir Walter Raleigh. The members engage in gentlemanly activities – they smoke cigars, play pool and cards, they discuss topics such as the species of animals that should be saved from the flood and whether it is a good idea to organize a Ladies’ Day. At the end of the book, the boat lifts anchor and leaves, paving the way for the novel’s sequel entitled Pursuit of the House-Boat.A House-Boat on the Styx is a highly entertaining satirical book. All the characters are well-known from history or literature, all are gentleman of extraordinary talent and the stories about them are all extraordinary, too – small wonder the book was one of the 10 best-selling novels in the U.S. in 1896, according to the Publishers Weekly.

"A House-Boat on the Styx" by John Kendrick Bangs. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive classic literature collection. This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts, We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. Also in books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy. We use state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.The premise of the book is that everyone who has ever died (up to the time in which the book is set, which seems to be about the time of its publication) has gone to Styx, the river that circles the underworld. The book begins with Charon, ferryman of the Styx being startled—and annoyed—by the arrival of a houseboat on the Styx. At first afraid that the boat will put him out of business, he later finds out that he is actually to be appointed the boat's janitor.

The book begins with Charon, ferryman of the Styx startled--and annoyed--by the arrival of a house boat on his mystical river. At first afraid that the boat will put him out of business, he later finds out that he is to be appointed the boat's janitor. What follows are eleven stories set on the house boat. There is no central theme; each chapter features various souls from history and mythology, and in the twelfth chapter the house boat disappears, seguing into the sequel, Pursuit of the House-Boat.