Books published by publisher A Word To The Wise

Stephen Vincent Bene't (22 July 1898 - 13 March 1943) was from a family with roots in Florida, which explains the Spanish name. Although born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, his father was a colonel in the U.S. Army, and hence he grew up in California and Georgia. He attended Yale starting in 1915 and that same year published his first book of poems, `Five Men and Pompey'. `Young Adventure' (1918) is considered his first mature book of poetry, and he went on to win two Pulitzer Prizes, in 1929 for `John Brown's Body' and in 1944 for `Western Star'. It appears that the whole family had great talents, as his grandfather was a Brigadier General, his father a Colonel, and both Stephen and his brother William Rose Benet won Pulitzer Prizes for poetry.

The eponymous heroine of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Sara Crewe (1888) is a seven-year-old girl. She is the daughter of a wealthy tradesman who has left her at Miss Minchin’s boarding school while being engaged in his trade in the Indian subcontinent. Thanks to the financial status of her father, the school’s headmistress Miss Minchin treats Sara like a princess. This special treatment does not spoil the little child, though. On the contrary, Sara develops the moral qualities of a noble lady, showing signs of generosity and modesty among her school peers. Nonetheless, things turn completely upside down when she receives news about the death of her father and the theft of his great fortunes. Miss Minchin’s true face is now unveiled as she decides to make of Sara her own servant and deprives her of all her previous advantages. Sara has to endure hunger, cold and the wickedness of some of her schoolmates. After episodes of psychological and physical suffering through which Sara shows great patience and confidence in her values, it turns out that her father’s fortunes have not been stolen. Her father’s friend, Mr. Carrisford, appears to inform her that he has been looking for her to hand her the money that has even doubled since her father’s death.

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14th 1811. Over the course of her Life Harriet wrote more than twenty books including travel memoirs and collections of letters and articles. Her stand out work is undoubtedly ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ about the life of African Americans under slavery. It reached millions as both a book and a play and was influential in setting both the tone and the agenda for anti slavery forces in the North and for unyielding anger in the South. When she was invited to the White House by Lincoln he is rumoured to have said "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” In the 1870s, Stowe's brother, Henry Ward, also an abolitionist, was accused of adultery and a national scandal ensured. Harriet fled to Florida unable to bear the attacks on her brother, who she believed innocent. Harriet was among the founders of the Hartford Art School, which later became part of the University of Hartford. She was also influential in the call for women to have a better standing in society and considered the cause as just as necessary as the abolition of slavery. With the death of her husband Calvin Stowe in 1886, after a half century together, Harriet's own health started to decline rapidly. By 1888 it was reported in The Washington Post that due to dementia she had started "writing Uncle Tom's Cabin over again. She imagined that she was engaged in the original composition, and for several hours every day she industriously inscribed long passages of the book, almost word for word, unconsciously from memory, the authoress imagining that she composed the matter as she went along. To her diseased mind the story was brand new and she frequently exhausted herself with labor which she regarded as freshly created." Harriet Beecher Stowe died on July 1, 1896, at age eighty-five in Hartford, Connecticut. She is buried in the historic cemetery at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

William Wymark Jacobs was born on September 8th, 1863 in the Wapping district of London, England. Jacobs grew up near the docks, where his father was a wharf manager. The docks and river side would be a constant theme of his writing in years to come. Although surrounded by poverty, he received a formal education in London, first at a private prep school and later at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institute. His working life began with a less than exciting clerical position at the Post Office Savings Bank. Jacobs put his imagination to good use writing short stories, sketches and articles, many for the Post Office house publication “Blackfriars Magazine.” In 1896 Jacobs published Many Cargoes, a selection of sea-faring yarns, which established him as a popular writer with a knack for authentic dialogue and trick endings. A year later he published a novelette, The Skipper’s Wooing, and in 1898 another collection of short stories; Sea Urchins. These works painted vivid pictures of dockland and seafaring London full of colourful characters. By 1899, Jacobs was able to quit the post office and write full-time. He married the noted suffragist Agnes Eleanor Williams (who had been jailed for her protest activities) in 1900. They set up households both in Loughton, Essex and in central London. The publication in 1902 of At Sunwich Port and Dialstone Lane, in 1904, cemented Jacobs’ reputation as one of the leading British authors of the new century. There followed a string of further successful publications, including Captain’s All (1905), Night Watches (1914), The Castaways (1916), and Sea Whispers (1926). Though Jacobs would create little in the way of new work after 1911, he still wrote and was recognized as a leading humorist, ranked alongside such writers as P. G. Wodehouse. William Wymark Jacobs died in a North London nursing home in Hornsey Lane, Islington on September 1st, 1943.

This, the ninth book about the Land Of Oz was his favorite and was first published on July 16th, 1915. In it Cap'n Bill and Trot journey to Oz and, with the help of the Scarecrow (and some magic he has from Glinda) overthrow the cruel King Krewl of Jinxland. Baum also experiments with such fascinating devices as berries to make you grow big or small and continued to develop themes and experiences that enthralled his young audience.

First published in 1818 at a time when the Gothic genre was much in vogue, Nightmare Abbey is a novel by Thomas Love Peacock that displays many Gothic conventions. Peacock’s characters are said to be based on his own friends and on other real people from the literary circles of the time. In addition, the novel is basically a satirical appraisal of the romantic and the transcendentalist movements flourishing in the late-eighteenth century. The plot follows Christopher Glowry and his son Scythrop who live in a family estate named Nightmare Abbey. Mr. Glowry is a very eccentric and melancholic man who likes to be surrounded by people who share his mood and obsessions. He has a taste for everything dark and gloomy and even his servants have such Gothic names as “Raven,” “Graves”, etc. The narrative particularly focuses on the character of Scythrop who is much like his father. Scythrop is obsessed with writing, research and the idea of “social regeneration” to which he devotes most of his time. The rest of his time is devoted to his two beloved females who do not know each other. While he publicly flirts with the one, he keeps the other in the tower’s hidden chamber. Unfortunately for Scythrop, his secret is revealed suddenly to both women. The latter decide to leave him for good, which drowns him in depression.

William Wymark Jacobs was born on September 8th, 1863 in the Wapping district of London, England. Jacobs grew up near the docks, where his father was a wharf manager. The docks and river side would be a constant theme of his writing in years to come. Although surrounded by poverty, he received a formal education in London, first at a private prep school and later at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institute. His working life began with a less than exciting clerical position at the Post Office Savings Bank. Jacobs put his imagination to good use writing short stories, sketches and articles, many for the Post Office house publication “Blackfriars Magazine.” In 1896 Jacobs published Many Cargoes, a selection of sea-faring yarns, which established him as a popular writer with a knack for authentic dialogue and trick endings. A year later he published a novelette, The Skipper’s Wooing, and in 1898 another collection of short stories; Sea Urchins. These works painted vivid pictures of dockland and seafaring London full of colourful characters. By 1899, Jacobs was able to quit the post office and write full-time. He married the noted suffragist Agnes Eleanor Williams (who had been jailed for her protest activities) in 1900. They set up households both in Loughton, Essex and in central London. The publication in 1902 of At Sunwich Port and Dialstone Lane, in 1904, cemented Jacobs’ reputation as one of the leading British authors of the new century. There followed a string of further successful publications, including Captain’s All (1905), Night Watches (1914), The Castaways (1916), and Sea Whispers (1926). Though Jacobs would create little in the way of new work after 1911, he still wrote and was recognized as a leading humorist, ranked alongside such writers as P. G. Wodehouse. William Wymark Jacobs died in a North London nursing home in Hornsey Lane, Islington on September 1st, 1943.

Horatio Alger, Jr. was born on January 13, 1832. A prolific American author, who specialised in the ‘rags to riches’ story. He wrote mainly for juveniles during America’s Gilded Age. Stories of impoverished boys rising from humble backgrounds and beginnings to lives fulfilling the American Dream through hard work, honesty and courage. Almost always it is an extraordinary act of honesty or bravery that turns the boy’s life around. For a time he was very successful but as America grew up his own ambitions did not and his new writings were not as able as his earlier ones such as this volume 'Phil The Fiddler'

Sabine Baring-Gould was born on January 28th, 1834. The family had its own manor house at Lew Trenchard on a three-thousand-acre estate, in Devon, England. His bibliography is immense. 1200 items at a minimum including the hymns ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and ‘Now the Day Is Over’. The family spent much of his childhood travelling in Europe and he was educated mainly by private tutors although he spent two years King's College School in London and a few months at Warwick Grammar School. Here he contracted a bronchial disease that was to plague him throughout his life. In 1852 he gained entrance to Cambridge University, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1857, and then a Master of Arts in 1860 from Clare College, Cambridge. As early as 1853 he had decided to become ordained. In 1864, after his education and several years teaching, he took Holy Orders. He became the curate at Horbury Bridge in West Riding. Here he met Grace Taylor, the daughter of a mill hand, aged fourteen. During the next few years they fell in love. His vicar, John Sharp, arranged for Grace to live with relatives in York to learn middle-class manners. Baring-Gould, meanwhile, relocated to become perpetual curate at Dalton, near Thirsk. He and Grace were married in 1868 at Wakefield. Their marriage lasted until her death 48 years later, and the couple had 15 children. Baring-Gould became the rector of East Mersea in Essex in 1871. In 1872 his father died and he inherited the family estates which included the gift of the living of Lew Trenchard parish. Upon its vacancy in 1881, he took the post, becoming parson as well as squire. He wrote many novels, his usual writing position was whilst standing, including The Broom-Squire set in the Devil's Punch Bowl (1896), Mehalah and Guavas, the Tinner (1897), a collection of ghost stories, and a 16-volume The Lives of the Saints. His studies in folklore resulted in The Book of Were-Wolves (1865), a frequently cited study of lycanthropy. The popular work Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, published in two parts, in 1866 and 1868. Each of the book's twenty-four chapters deals with one medieval superstition, its variants and history. Grace died in 1916. He had carved on her headstone: Dimidium Animae Meae ("Half my Soul"). Sabine Baring-Gould died on January 2nd, 1924 at Lew Trenchard. He was buried next to Grace.

The Emerald City of Oz was originally published on July 20th, 1910 and is the sixth book in the Oz series written by L Frank Baum. It is the story of Dorothy Gale and her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em taking a tour of the Land Of Oz as they come to live in Oz permanently. Whilst they are touring the Quadling Country, the Nome King is assembling allies for an invasion of Oz. As he now has banished both his General and his Colonel he has to rely on advice from the old soldier Guph who is on the search for further recruits to take on the magicians of Oz.

Herbert George Wells was born on September 21st, 1866 at Atlas House, 46 High Street, Bromley, Kent. He was the youngest of four siblings and his family affectionately knew him as ‘Bertie’. The first few years of his childhood were spent fairly quietly, and Wells didn’t display much literary interest until, in 1874, he accidentally broke his leg and was left to recover in bed, largely entertained by the library books his father regularly brought him. Through these Wells found he could escape the boredom and misery of his bed and convalescence by exploring the new worlds he encountered in these books. From these humble beginnings began a career that was, after several delays, to be seen as one of the most brilliant of modern English writers. Able to write comfortably in a number of genres he was especially applauded for his science fiction works such as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds but his forays into the social conditions of the times, with classics such as Kipps, were almost as commercially successful. His short stories are miniature masterpieces many of which bring new and incredible ideas of science fiction to the edge of present day science fact. Wells also received four nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Despite a strong and lasting second marriage his affairs with other women also brought the complications of fathering other children. His writings and work against fascism, as well as the promotion of socialism, brought him into increasing doubts with and opposition to religion. His writings on what the world could be in works, such as A Modern Utopia, are thought provoking as well as being plausible, especially when viewed from the distressing times they were written in. His diabetic condition pushed him to create what is now the largest Diabetes charity in the United Kingdom. Wells even found the time to run twice for Parliament. It was a long, distinguished and powerfully successful career by the time he died, aged 79, on August 13th, 1946.

The Massacre at Paris is a historical play by the celebrated Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, also the author of the masterpiece Dr. Faustus. It displays the events of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre that took place in the French capital in 1572. The gory massacre, which lasted for several weeks, was of a religious aspect. In addition to Parisian Calvinist Protestants, thousands of their coreligionists poured into the city to celebrate a the wedding of one of their leaders when they were violently attacked and exterminated by mobs. The massacre is believed to be planned by French Catholic leaders and resulted in a general atmosphere of religious terror throughout the country. The play also describes the way the Duke of Guise, leader of the Catholic League, was later lured into a trap and assassinated by his Protestant enemies. Although the play is set in the neighboring France, the religious massacre that took place and its connotations were of great importance to Protestant England. Significantly, by the end of Marlowe’s work, an English messenger had to take a letter to Queen Elizabeth from the French King Henry III who had recently converted from Protestantism to Catholicism in order to be crowned.