Stories

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• "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" (1865) by Lewis Carroll

  17 June by Lewis Carroll

  Written in 1862 by the Oxford lecturer in mathematics Charles Dodgson (1832-1898) to amuse Alice Liddell, one of the daughters of the dean of his Christ Church faculty, this brilliant, inventive, very original and very funny tale gained immediate world-wide attention when it was published in (...)

• "A Simple Soul (Un cœur simple)" by Gustave Flaubert (1877)

  4 June by Gustave Flaubert

  Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) is generally considered as one of the greatest Franch-language stylists of all time because of the elegant, clear and incisive quality of his prose.
  During his lifetime he published just four novels (two "mainstream" novels and two historical novels) and one (...)

• Herman Melville’s masterful story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853)

  31 May by Herman Melville

  The narrator-lawyer recounts how a young man in his office, the mildest and most inconspicuous person one could imagine, demonstrated the most determined and persistent refusal to obey instructions in a surprising and surprisingly effective way by simply stating in the calmest of tones: “I would (...)

• "Nutcracker and the Mouse-King" (1816) - a fairy-tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  24 May by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  Marie’s godfather is a very talented watchmaker who gives his grandchildren a castle with a marvellous set of animated figures on Christmas Eve – and a strangely realistic little figure with a large head that can crack nuts with its teeth. These presents are carefully put away by the parents for (...)

• "From the Life of a Good-for-nothing (Taugenichts)" (1826) - a Romantic classic by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

  17 May by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

  In the first sentence of this masterpiece of the German Romantic movement the youthful narrator rubs the sleep out of his eyes, listens to the twittering of the starlings and the murmurings of his father’s mill and sits on the doorstep to bask in the warm spring sunshine, only to hear his (...)