These are the words of Christopher Columbus - the record of his first voyage to America. His private journal from the trip was lost, but not before being studied and condensed by later writers like Spanish historian and Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, whose abridgment has been changed to fir...
An Ideal Husband is an 1895 comedy by Oscar Wilde which revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honor. The action is set in London, and takes place over the course of 24 hours. Together with The Importance of Being Earnest, it is often cons...
Martin Luther was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk, and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation. Luther came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchas...
North of Boston, first published in 1914, was Robert Frost's second collection of poetry. Many of the poems take the form of conversations and hence are very suitable for presentation in a dramatic format. Contents: "The Pasture" "Mending Wall" "The Death of the Hired Man" "The Mountain" "A Hundred...
Guy de Maupassant is widely regarded as the father of the modern short story. As his 13 volumes of short stories attest, he was a prolific writer of this form. He had a simple, efficient style of writing and, like Anton Chekhov, found inspiration for his stories in the day-to-day lives of characters...
Although unfamiliar with the Persian language, the eminent English poet and critic Richard le Gallienne had a profound interest in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In 1901 he published a collection of 261 quatrains, which was based on earlier English translations, in particular the prose version by Jus...
First published in 1893 as a children's book to encourage the humane treatment of animals, Beautiful Joe has taken it's place along with Black Beauty, becoming a favorite of several generations of youngsters. Beautiful Joe narrates the story of his mutilation at the hands of a cruel master and the l...
Tal Howard is trying to adjust to life after being held prisoner by the Chinese during the Korean War. During his time in camp, he befriended a dying soldier who confessed a secret about a small fortune he had stolen from his brother and hidden somewhere in his hometown. After repatriation, Tal find...
A beautiful woman imagines she is married below her station. In an effort to make her happy, her husband brings home an invitation to a ball attended by the upper crust of Paris society. To his chagrin, she is only disappointed, and explains she has nothing to wear to the ball. The husband sacrifice...
Bill Driscoll and Sam (we never learn his last name), a pair of turn-of-the-20th-century con men embark on quite an adventure. The pair need $2,000.00 to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scam in Western Illinois. They decide to kidnap the only son of a prominent Alabama citizen in the small town of Su...
Susan Glaspell, one of the founders of the Provincetown Players, first published this short story adaptation of her popular one-act play Trifles in 1917. Both story and play have appeared in numerous anthologies. Inspired by events witnessed during her years as a court reporter in Iowa, Glaspell cra...
