The following excerpt is the Preface to the book Animal Ghosts or Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter by Elliot O’Donnell. O’Donnell was born in 1872. He worked at one time as a police officer but later became a “ghost hunter.” This piece [as are all of his works (to the best of my knowledge)] is non-fiction.
Historic Articles by Authors
III. ON THE ART OF POETRY By Aristotle
A third difference in these arts is in the manner in which each kind of object is represented. Given both the same means and the same kind of object for imitation, one may either (1) speak at one moment in narrative and at another in an assumed character, as Homer does; or (2) one may […]
Solitude by Henry David Thoreau
Solitude By Henry David Thoreau This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as […]
INTELLECT By Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it in the chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it. Water dissolves wood and iron and salt; air dissolves water; electric fire dissolves air, but the intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method, and the subtlest unnamed relations of nature in its resistless […]
ON THE ART OF POETRY By Aristotle II.
ON THE ART OF POETRY By Aristotle II. The objects the imitator represents are actions, with agents who are necessarily either good men or bad—the diversities of human character being nearly always derivative from this primary distinction, since the line between virtue and vice is one dividing the whole of mankind. It follows, therefore, that […]
Origin of Printing by Frederick Saunders (1839)
Origin and Progress of Printing by Frederick Saunders (1839) (I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the ideals of an early publisher, a pioneer in modern printing of his day. Much like many of us are pioneers of modern web and digital printing. The text was written in 1839. I’m sure […]
The Story of a Speech by Mark Twain
An address delivered in 1877, and a review of it twenty-nine years later. The original speech was delivered at a dinner given by the publishers of The Atlantic Monthly in honor of the seventieth anniversary o f the birth of John Greenleaf Whittier, at the Hotel Brunswick, Boston, December 17, 1877. This is an […]
ARISTOTLE ON THE ART OF POETRY
Check back each day, over time we will publish the complete work of Aristotle on the Art of Poetry.
Byron’s Life Explained by Lord MaCaulay
The pretty fable by which the Duchess of Orleans illustrates the character of her son, the regent, might, with little change, be applied to Byron. All the fairies, save one, had been bidden to his cradle. All the gossips had been profuse of their gifts. One had bestowed nobility, another genius, a third beauty. The […]
Politics of American Authors by William Dean Howells
No thornier theme could well be suggested than I was once invited to consider by an Englishman who wished to know how far American politicians were scholars, and how far American authors took part in politics. In my mind I first revolted from the inquiry, and then I cast about, in the fascination it […]
Bio of Benjamin Franklin by Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the year 1716, or about that period, a boy used to be seen in the streets of Boston, who was known among his schoolfellows and playmates by the name of Ben Franklin. Ben was born in 1706; so that he was now about ten years old. His father, who had come over from England, […]
Confessions of a Humorist by O. Henry
There was a painless stage of incubation that lasted twenty-five years, and then it broke out on me, and people said I was It. But they called it humor instead of measles. The employees in the store bought a silver inkstand for the senior partner on his fiftieth birthday. We crowded into his private office […]
Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts by Thomas de Quincey
MURDER,CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS. by Thomas de Quincey DOCTOR NORTH: You are a liberal man: liberal in the true classical sense, not in the slang sense of modern politicians and education-mongers. Being so, I am sure that you will sympathize with my case. I am an ill-used man, Dr. North—particularly ill used; […]
Life and Writing by Arthur Christopher Benson
Life and Writing by Arthur Christopher Benson There is a tendency, not by any means among the greater writers, but among what may be called the epigoni,—the satellites of literature, the men who would be great if they knew how,—to speak of the business of writing as if it were a sacred mystery, pontifically celebrated, […]
The What and the How In Art by William Dean Howells
THE WHAT AND THE HOW IN ART by William Dean Howells One of the things always enforcing itself upon the consciousness of the artist in any sort is the fact that those whom artists work for rarely care for their work artistically. They care for it morally, personally, partially. I suspect that criticism itself has […]