This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

The day had been very hot even for the Transvaal, where the days still know how to be hot in the autumn, although the neck of the summer is broken-especially when the thunderstorms hold off for a week or two, as they do occasionally. Even the succulent blue lilies-a variety of the agapanthus which is so familiar to us in English greenhouses-hung their long trumpet-shaped flowers and looked oppressed and miserable, beneath the burning breath of the hot wind which had been blowing for hours like the draught from a volcano. The grass, too, near the wide roadway that stretched in a feeble and...

Hunter Quatermain's Story - By H. Rider Haggard Sir Henry Curtis, as everybody acquainted with him knows, is one of the most hospitable men on earth. It was in the course of the enjoyment of his hospitality at his place in Yorkshire the other day that I heard the hunting story which I am now about to transcribe. Many of those who read it will no doubt have heard some of the strange rumours that are flying about to the effect that Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good, R.N., recently found a vast treasure of diamonds out in the heart of Africa, supposed to have been hidden by the...

It was a spring afternoon in the sixth year of the reign of King Henry VII. of England. There had been a great show in London, for that day his Grace opened the newly convened Parliament, and announced to his faithful people-who received the news with much cheering, since war is ever popular at first-his intention of invading France, and of leading the English armies in person. In Parliament itself, it is true, the general enthusiasm was somewhat dashed when allusion was made to the finding of the needful funds; but the crowds without, formed for the most part of persons who would not be...

More than thirty years ago two atoms of the eternal Energy sped forth from the heart of it which we call God, and incarnated themselves in the human shapes that were destined to hold them for a while, as vases hold perfumes, or goblets wine, or as sparks of everlasting radium inhabit the bowels of the rock. Perhaps these two atoms, or essences, or monads indestructible, did but repeat an adventure, or many, many adventures. Perhaps again and again they had proceeded from that Home august and imperishable on certain mornings of the days of Time, to return thither at noon or nightfall, laden...

Allan Quatermain has determined to go farther afield than he had ever traveled before, into the depths of the African jungle -- on a march inland to the hills between lands controlled by the chiefs Wambe and Nala. Quatermain has heard of the elephants dwelling in the dense forests at the foot of the mountains edging Wambe's lands -- and also stories of Wambe himself, so ruthless a ruler he murdered in cold blood an entire party of English party who, seven years before, entered his country to hunt elephants. Quatermain determines to go elephant-hunting all the same. Before he has gone far,...

The story which is narrated in the following pages came to me from the lips of my old friend Allan Quatermain, or Hunter Quatermain, as we used to call him in South Africa. He told it to me one evening when I was stopping with him at the place he bought in Yorkshire. Shortly after that, the death of his only son so unsettled him that he immediately left England, accompanied by two companions, his old fellow-voyagers, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, and has now utterly vanished into the dark heart of Africa. He is persuaded that a white people, of which he has heard rumours all his life,...

Lysbeth - A Tale of the Dutch - H. Rider Haggard - World Classics. There are, roughly, two ways of writing an historical romance-the first to choose some notable and leading characters of the time to be treated, and by the help of history attempt to picture them as they were; the other, to make a study of that time and history with the country in which it was enacted, and from it to deduce the necessary characters. In the case of "Lysbeth" the author has attempted this second method. By an example of the trials, adventures, and victories of a burgher family of the generation of Philip II. and...

This is the story of me, Ana the scribe, son of Meri, and of certain of the days that I have spent upon the earth. These things I have written down now that I am very old in the reign of Rameses, the third of that name, when Egypt is once more strong and as she was in the ancient time. I have written them before death takes me, that they may be buried with me in death, for as my spirit shall arise in the hour of resurrection, so also these my words may arise in their hour and tell to those who shall come after me upon the earth of what I knew upon the earth. Let it be as Those in heaven shall...

First published in 1893 by the author of "King Solomon's Mines," "She," etc.