Ocean State Libraries

Henry Jekyll was the kindest, most respected man in England. Why then was the foul, brutal Hyde his sole heir? The answer to this was so shocking it could drive men mad.

First published in English by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859 from its original Farsi, "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" is a collection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam, a Persian astronomer and mathematician born in the later part of the 11th century. Omar Khayyam's poetry, which received very little international notoriety in its own day, achieved classic status when it was discovered and rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald over seven...

"The author 'shipped out of Boston in 1834 on the "Pilgrim" and sailed around the Horn to California on a hide-trading expedition. The book is based on the journal he kept during the voyage. Horrified by the brutal captain's mistreatment of the sailors, and shocked by their lack of redress, Dana wrote with a burning indignation that did much to rouse the public to the mariners' plight.'" Benet's Reader's Ency of Am Lit.

"Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) was a Dutch humanist, scholar, and social critic, and one of the most important figures of the Renaissance. The Praise of Folly is perhaps his best-known work. Originally written to amuse his friend Sir Thomas More, this satiric celebration of pleasure, youth, and intoxication irreverently pokes fun at the pieties of theologians and the foibles that make us all human, while ultimately reaffirming the value of Christian...