The old wives' tale

Riceyman Steps is a novel by British novelist Arnold Bennett, first published in 1923 and winner of that year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. It follows a year in the life of Henry Earlforward, a miserly second-hand bookshop owner in the Clerkenwell area of London. (from wikipedia.org)

Riceyman Steps

S'il se contentait de nous narrer la destinée heureuse-malheureuse, tragique et commune d'Anna Tellwright, ce roman aurait déjà la valeur d'un document à la fois historique, sociologique et psychologique exceptionnel. D'une dureté impitoyable sous les apparences de la charité religieuse et de la respectabilité, une société puritaine s'organise autour de l'accumulation des richesses, avec son cortège de perversions et de névroses. Dans ce haut-lieu de la céramique que sont les "Potteries" du Staffordshire, Anna, tyrannisée par un père digne de l'Harpagon de Molière, mène une vie de soumission et de compromis. Les injustices de la condition féminine et les souffrances personnelles ont rarement été perçues et dénoncées avec autant d'acuité. Cette fiction romanesque allie le singulier à l'universel au travers de personnages vrais parce que faux, ambivalents, contradictoires.

Anna, malgré tout

La fille du magnat américain Theodore Racksole veut un steak et une bière, mais un palace d'un si haut standing que le Grand hôtel Babylon ne saurait s'abaisser à des mets aussi vulgaires. Qu'il cela ne tienne : Racksole rachète donc l'hôtel. Mais le milliardaire ne s'attendait pas à ce que la gestion hôtelière soit semée de tant d'embûches : la réceptionniste disparaît, le maître d'hôtel démissionne, un jeune diplomate est trouvé mort et son corps est subtilisé. Et que devient donc le prince Eugène, qui devait descendre au Grand hôtel Babylon et dont personne n'a de nouvelles ? Les énigmes s'accumulent et des machinations internationales semblent s'ourdir dans les corridors chics du palace.

Le Grand Hôtel Babylon

Why does not some mental efficiency specialist come forward and show us how to make our minds do the work which our minds are certainly capable of doing? I do not mean a quack. All the physical efficiency specialists who advertise largely are not quacks. Some of them achieve very genuine results. If a course of treatment can be devised for the body, a course of treatment can be devised for the mind. Thus we might realize some of the ambitions which all of us cherish in regard to the utilization in our spare time of that magnificent machine which we allow to rust within our craniums. We have the desire to perfect ourselves, to round off our careers with the graces of knowledge and taste. How many people would not gladly undertake some branch of serious study, so that they might not die under the reproach of having lived and died without ever really having known anything about anything! It is not the absence of desire that prevents them. It is, first, the absence of will-power-not the will to begin, but the will to continue; and, second, a mental apparatus which is out of condition, "puffy, " "weedy, " through sheer neglect. The remedy, then, divides itself into two parts, the cultivation of will-power, and the getting into condition of the mental apparatus. And these two branches of the cure must be worked concurrently

How to Increase your Mental Efficiency

Priam Farll est un peintre de génie qui a choisi la solitude pour échapper au fardeau de la gloire. Quand il revient à Londres, c'est dans un meublé obscur qu'il se réfugie en compagnie de son majordome. La mort inopinée de ce dernier lui offre une occasion de s'effacer pour toujours : il endosse l'identité de celui-ci et livre la dépouille du domestique aux pompes et circonstances d'un enterrement grandiose. Mais le voilà condamné à supporter le passé d'un homme dont il ne savait rien et à improviser son futur. Le jeune cinquantenaire ("l'âge le plus romanesque et le plus tendre de tous les âges pour un homme"), plutôt innocent dans le domaine des sentiments, va devoir se rendre au rendez-vous galant prévu par son domestique et en assumer les conséquences... Comédie de moeurs aux merveilleux ressorts dramatiques, satire acide sur le monde de l'art, Enterré vivant est aussi une formidable démonstration des qualités d'observation, de style et d'humour d'un auteur britannique trop peu connu des Français. Son personnage, divin naïf à sa façon, est une réjouissante figure de la prose anglaise du début XXe siècle. Il est urgent de la redécouvrir et de se laisser séduire par son charme et ses subtiles analyses.

Enterré vivant - Occasion

This   carefully crafted ebook: "Lilian (Unabridged)" is formatted for   your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents.
Content :
A beautiful young girl, was a typist, though not a contented typist. She yearned after a high, impossible ideal, which involved all the more vulgar   luxuries so easily obtainable in exchange for cash.
The typewriting office at which she was employed had been started by Felix   Grig, a middle-aged man of means, as a hobby for his spinster sister. Miss   Grig suspected that Felix was more interested in Lilian than he ought to be ;   therefore, she gave Lilian the sack. But this ruse was unsuccessful, for   Felix invited Lilian to dine at the expensive restaurant of her dreams and   suggested a little trip to the Continent. Lilian accepted with alacrity and   off they went. Thereafter, chapters celebrating the delights of prosperous   indolence on the Riviera. Unhappily, after a few days of this delicious   existence Felix catches a cold and Lilian discovers that she is going to have   a baby. Felix's cold becomes pneu- monia ; but pneumonia or not, he gets up,   marries Lilian, makes a will leaving her everything, and dies. Lilian, having   assisted at the usual ceremonies, returns to England and lives happily or   unhappily ever afterwards in Felix's town house.
Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was an English journalist, novelist, and writer.   After working as a rent collector and solicitor's clerk, Bennett won a   writing contest which convinced him to become a journalist. He later turned   to the writing of novels, including his most famous Clayhanger and Anna of   the five towns.

Lilian (Unabridged)

"Yes, he's one of those men that don't know how to manage. Good situation. Regular income. Quite enough for luxuries as well as needs. Not really extravagant. And yet the fellow's always in difficulties. Somehow he gets nothing out of his money. Excellent flat-half empty! Always looks as if he'd had the brokers in. New suit-old hat! Magnificent necktie-baggy trousers! Asks you to dinner: cut glass-bad mutton, or Turkish coffee-cracked cup! He can't understand it. Explanation simply is that he fritters his income away. Wish I had the half of it! I'd show him-"

So we have most of us criticised, at one time or another, in our superior way.

We are nearly all chancellors of the exchequer: it is the pride of the moment. Newspapers are full of articles explaining how to live on such-and-such a sum, and these articles provoke a correspondence whose violence proves the interest they excite. Recently, in a daily organ, a battle raged round the question whether a woman can exist nicely in the country on L85 a year. I have seen an essay, "How to live on eight shillings a week." But I have never seen an essay, "How to live on twenty-four hours a day." Yet it has been said that time is money. That proverb understates the case. Time is a great deal more than money. If you have time you can obtain money-usually. But though you have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or the cat by the fire has.

How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

La fille du magnat américain Theodore Racksole veut un steak et une bière, mais un palace d'un si haut standing que le Grand Hôtel Babylon ne saurait s'abaisser à des mets aussi vulgaires. Qu'à cela ne tienne : Racksole rachète donc l'hôtel. Mais le milliardaire ne s'attendait pas à ce que la gestion hôtelière soit semée de tant d'embûches : la réceptionniste disparaît, le maître d'hôtel démissionne, un jeune diplomate est trouvé mort et son corps est subtilisé.Et que devient donc le prince Eugène, qui devait descendre au Grand Hôtel Babylon et dont personne n'a de nouvelles ? Les énigmes s'accumulent et des machinations internationales semblent s'ourdir dans les corridors chics du palace.

The old wives' tale

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