Books in Original Classics series

Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–76 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Written in clear and persuasive prose, Paine marshaled moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776, at the beginning of the American Revolution, and became an immediate sensation.

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is a short story of speculative fiction by American author Washington Irving, contained in his collection of 34 essays and short stories entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Written while Irving was living abroad in Birmingham, England, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was first published in 1820. Along with Irving's companion piece "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is among the earliest examples of American fiction with enduring popularity, especially during the Halloween season.

"So – for God's sake – don't say anything to the inspector."A respectable household is shocked when a strange police inspector visits them shortly after dinner... and proceeds to unravel their prejudices and lies. Through this almost surreal murder-mystery, Priestley interweaves social comment with a gripping story that twists and turns every few pages.True to the original vision of the author and featuring beautiful engaging artwork, the book features the entire play, unabridged (in the original British English), as well as an illustrated Character List (Dramatis Personae), 132 pages of story artwork, and fascinating support material that details the life and work of J.B. Priestley - all beautifully presented in color.An alternative text edition with simplified US dialogue is also available enabling differentiation in the classroom.

The Valley of the Moon (1913) is a novel by American writer Jack London (as well as the mythic and romantic name for the wine-growing Sonoma Valley of California). The valley where it is set is located north of the San Francisco Bay Area in Sonoma County, California where Jack London was a resident; he built his ranch in Glen Ellen. he novel The Valley of the Moon is a story of a working-class couple, Billy and Saxon Roberts, struggling laborers in Oakland at the Turn-of-the-Century, who left city life behind and searched Central and Northern California for suitable farmland to own. The book is notable for its scenes in which the proletarian hero enjoys fellowship with the artists' colony in Carmel, and he settles in the Valley of the Moon. The book begins with Billy as a Teamster and Saxon working in a laundry. Billy has also boxed professionally with some success, but decided there was no future in it. He was particularly upset by one bout in which he was fighting a friend and they had to continue fighting and making a good show of it after his friend injured a hand. Billy and Saxon's early married life is disrupted by a major wave of strikes. Billy is involved in violent attacks on strikebreakers, and goes to jail. Saxon loses her baby in the backwash of the violence. She hears socialist arguments but does not definitively accept them, later meeting an old woman with an individualist view on relationships, describing how she successfully attached herself to a series of rich men. She also meets a lad called Jack who has built his own boat and seems to be based on Jack London himself as a teenager.

Joseph Crosby Lincoln (February 13, 1870 – March 10, 1944) was an American author of novels, poems, and short stories, many set in a fictionalized Cape Cod. Lincoln's work frequently appeared in popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and The Delineator. Lincoln was aware of contemporary naturalist writers, such as Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser, who used American literature to plumb the depths of human nature, but he rejected this literary exercise. Lincoln claimed that he was satisfied "spinning yarns" that made readers feel good about themselves and their neighbors. Two of his stories have been adapted to film. Lincoln was born in Brewster, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and his mother moved the family to Chelsea, Massachusetts, a manufacturing city outside Boston, after the death of his father. Lincoln's literary career celebrating "old Cape Cod" can partly be seen as an attempt to return to an Eden from which he had been driven by family tragedy. His literary portrayal of Cape Cod can also be understood as a pre-modern haven occupied by individuals of old Yankee stock which was offered to readers as an antidote to an America that was undergoing rapid modernization, urbanization, immigration, and industrialization. Lincoln was a Republican and a Universalist.

The Red Badge of Courage is a war novel by American author Stephen Crane (1871–1900). Taking place during the American Civil War, the story is about a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. Overcome with shame, he longs for a wound, a "red badge of courage," to counteract his cowardice. When his regiment once again faces the enemy, Henry acts as standard-bearer.

Did Horace "dare" take a risk on that poet Rickman? The poet dropped his aitches, for one thing. And there was the matter of that actress he doted on -- low-class! Yet cousin Lucia kept asking about him . . . and Horace did think maybe, just maybe, Rickman was a genius. But could Horace introduce Rickman to his club? He yearned to -- and yet, as he told Lucia, "The burnt critic dreads the divine fire!" In this witty 1904 novel of literary and social manners and foibles, May Sinclair demonstrates all the wit, perception and style that made her one of the most respected -- and most read -- novelists of her time. May Sinclair was the pseudonym of Mary Amelia St. Clair (24 August 1863 – 14 November 1946), a popular British writer who wrote about two dozen novels, short stories and poetry.She was an active suffragist, and member of the Woman Writers' Suffrage League. May Sinclair was also a significant critic in the area of modernist poetry and prose, and she is attributed with first using the term stream of consciousness in a literary context, when reviewing the first volumes of Dorothy Richardson's novel sequence Pilgrimage (1915–67), in The Egoist, April 1918. Early life: She was born in Rock Ferry, Cheshire. Her father was a Liverpool shipowner, who went bankrupt, became an alcoholic, and died before she was an adult. Her mother was strict and religious; the family moved to Ilford on the edge of London. After one year of education at Cheltenham Ladies College, she acted as caretaker for her brothers, as four of the five, all older, were suffering from a fatal congenital heart disease. Career: From 1896 she wrote professionally, to support herself and her mother, who died in 1901. An active feminist, Sinclair treated a number of themes relating to the position of women, and marriage. She also wrote non-fiction based on studies of philosophy, particularly German idealism. Her works sold well in the United States. Around 1913, at the Medico-Psychological Clinic in London, she became interested in psychoanalytic thought, and introduced matter related to Sigmund Freud's teaching in her novels.In 1914, she volunteered to join the Munro Ambulance Corps, a charitable organization (which included Lady Dorothie Feilding, Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm) that aided wounded Belgian soldiers on the Western Front in Flanders. She was sent home after only a few weeks at the front; she wrote about the experience in both prose and poetry. She wrote early criticism on Imagism and the poet H. D. (1915 in The Egoist); she was on social terms with H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), Richard Aldington and Ezra Pound at the time. She also reviewed in a positive light the poetry of T. S. Eliot (1917 in the Little Review) and the fiction of Dorothy Richardson (1918 in The Egoist). It was in connection with Richardson that she introduced "stream of consciousness" as a literary term, which was very generally adopted. Some aspects of Sinclair's subsequent novels have been traced as influenced by modernist techniques, particularly in the autobiographical Mary Olivier: A Life (1919). She was included in the 1925 Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers. Sinclair was a believer in Spiritualism, and was also a member of the Society for Psychical Research from 1914. Sinclair wrote two volumes of supernatural fiction, Uncanny Stories (1923) and The Intercessor and Other Stories (1931).E. F. Bleiler called Sinclair "an underrated writer" and described Uncanny Stories as "excellent".Gary Crawford has stated Sinclair's contribution to the supernatural fiction genre, "small as it is, is notable"....

John Habberton (1842–1921) was an American author. He spent nearly twenty years as the literary and drama critic for the New York Herald, but he is best known for his stories about early California life, many of which were collected in his 1880 book Romance of California Life: Illustrated by Pacific Slope Stories, Thrilling, Pathetic and Humorous (New York: Baker, Pratt & Co., 1880). Habberton also wrote Helen's Babies, published in 1876 by Loring Publisher, Boston; and in the early 20th Century by George Routledge and Sons, London. In most of these copies, Habberton is not listed as the author. The novel is subtitled: "Helen's Babies with some account of their ways...innocent, crafty, angelic, impish, witching and repulsive by THEIR LATEST VICTIM." The book was one of the Ruby Books series for boys and girls. Habberton is acknowledged as the author of the book in an advertisement within the 1903 edition of Andersen's Fairy Tales published by Routledge. Habberton is acknowledged, also, in an inexpensive cardboard-back edition of "Helen's Babies" published by (and copyrighted by!) Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin in 1934. That edition is copiously illustrated by Pauline Adams. Helen's Babies was intended as just a piece of humour and aimed at an adult audience. But the hilarious novel almost instantly became a major juvenile literature success, highly estimated by the youngsters as well as authorities like Rudyard Kipling. It became a classic ranking on par with "Tom Sawyer", "Wind in the Willows", "Winnie-the Pooh" and the like. Popularity dwindled a bit after WW-II (although George Orwell mentions it very favourably in his 1946 essay on early American literature, Riding Down from Bangor), but started rising again in the 1980s. Translated into numerous foreign languages, it secured Habberton's modest share of immortality in literature. Curiously, as being one of the first pieces of an author, so insecure about his abilities, that he omitted his author name resp. wrote under pseudonym for many years. Habberton was also known under the pseudonym "Smelfungus." (Source: Initials and Pseudonyms: A Dictionary of Literary Disguises by Cushing, William).

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser ( August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency. Dreiser's best known novels include Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925). In 1930 he was nominated to the Nobel Prize in Literature 1918. Contents: Free; McEwen of the Shining Slave Makers; Nigger Jeff; The Lost Phoebe; The Second Choice; A Story of Stories; Old Rogaum and His Theresa; Will You Walk Into My Parlor; The Cruise of the Idlewild; Married; When the Old Century Was New.

The Wise Woman: A Parable, is a fairy tale novel by George MacDonald. George MacDonald (10 December 1824 – 18 September 1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. He was a pioneering figure in the field of fantasy literature and the mentor of fellow writer Lewis Carroll. His writings have been cited as a major literary influence by many notable authors including W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Walter de la Mare,E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle.C. S. Lewis wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his "master": "Picking up a copy of Phantastes one day at a train-station bookstall, I began to read. A few hours later," said Lewis, "I knew that I had crossed a great frontier." G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence".Elizabeth Yates wrote of Sir Gibbie, "It moved me the way books did when, as a child, the great gates of literature began to open and first encounters with noble thoughts and utterances were unspeakably thrilling." Even Mark Twain, who initially disliked MacDonald, became friends with him, and there is some evidence that Twain was influenced by MacDonald. Christian author Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) wrote in Christian Disciplines, vol. 1, (pub. 1934) that "it is a striking indication of the trend and shallowness of the modern reading public that George MacDonald's books have been so neglected". In addition to his fairy tales, MacDonald wrote several works on Christian apologetics including several that defended his view of Christian Universalism.

Mary Jane Holmes (April 5, 1825 – October 6, 1907) was a bestselling and prolific American author who published 39 popular novels, as well as short stories. Her first novel sold 250,000 copies; and she had total sales of 2 million books in her lifetime, second only to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Portraying domestic life in small-town and rural settings, she examined gender relationships, as well as those of class and race. She also dealt with slavery and the American Civil War with a strong sense of moral justice. Since the late 20th century she has received fresh recognition and reappraisal, although her popular work was excluded from most 19th-century literary histories.

WHO IS SHE? "Tom, who was that girl you were so taken with last night?" "Wasn't particularly taken last night with anybody." Which practical falsehood the gentleman escaped from by a mental reservation, saying to himself that it was not last night that he was "taken." "I mean the girl you had so much to do with. Come, Tom!" "I hadn't much to do with her. I had to be civil to somebody. She was the easiest." "Who is she, Tom?" "Her name is Lothrop." "O you tedious boy! I know what her name is, for I was introduced to her, and Mrs. Wishart spoke so I could not help but understand her; but I mean something else, and you know I do. Who is she? And where does she come from?" "She is a cousin of Mrs. Wishart; and she comes from the country somewhere." "One can see that." "How can you?" the brother asked rather fiercely. "You see it as well as I do," the sister returned coolly. "Her dress shows it." "I didn't notice anything about her dress." "You are a man." "Well, you women dress for the men. If you only knew a thing or two, you would dress differently." "That will do! You would not take me anywhere, if I dressed like Miss Lothrop." "I'll tell you what," said the young man, stopping short in his walk up and down the floor;-"she can afford to do without your advantages!" Susan Bogert Warner (July 11, 1819 – March 17, 1885), was an American evangelical writer of religious fiction, children's fiction, and theological works. Biography Born in New York City, she wrote, under the name of "Elizabeth Wetherell", thirty novels, many of which went into multiple editions. However, her first novel, The Wide, Wide World (1850), was the most popular. It was translated into several other languages, including French, German, and Dutch. Other than Uncle Tom's Cabin, it was perhaps the most widely circulated story of American authorship. Other works include Queechy (1852), The Law and the Testimony, (1853), The Hills of the Shatemuc, (1856), The Old Helmet (1863), and Melbourne House (1864). In the nineteenth century, critics admired the depictions of rural American life in her early novels. American reviewers also praised Warner's Christian and moral teachings, while London reviewers tended not to favor her didacticism. Early twentieth-century critics classified Warner's work as "sentimental" and thus lacking in literary value. In the later twentieth century, feminist critics rediscovered The Wide, Wide World, discussing it as a quintessential domestic novel and focusing on analyzing its portrayal of gender dynamics. Some of her works were written jointly with her younger sister Anna Bartlett Warner, who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym "Amy Lothrop". The Warner sisters also wrote famous children's Christian songs. Susan wrote "Jesus Bids Us Shine" while Anna was author of the first verse of the well-known children's song "Jesus Loves Me", which she wrote at Susan's request. Both sisters became devout Christians in the late 1830s. After their conversion, they became confirmed members of the Mercer Street Presbyterian church, although in later life, Warner became drawn into Methodist circles. The sisters also held Bible studies for the West Point cadets. When they were on military duty, the cadets would sing "Jesus Loves Me." The popularity of the song was so great that upon Warner's death, she was buried in the West Point Cemetery. Susan Warner died in Highland Falls, New York and is buried in the West Point Cemetery.