"Depend upon it, you see but half. You see the evil, but you do not see the consolation. There will be little rubs and disappointments every where, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better; we find comfort somewhere."
—page 46

Fun Facts

• Mansfield Park is perhaps, for Jane Austen fans, the most controversial and yet the least popular of her major novels.
• The name of Harry Potter character, Mrs. Norris, is J.K. Rowling's nod to Jane Austen's Mrs. Norris the officious, skinflint sister of Lady Beltram and reveals Austen's influence on Rowling's writing.
• Mansfield Park was the first of her novels that was not a revision of an earlier work.

Translated by Allen Mandelbaum

"Trojans, do not trust in the horse. Whatever it may be, I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts."
—Book II, lines 69-70, page 30

Fun Facts

• The Aeneid was written in a time of major political and social change, when many Romans' faith in the greatness of Rome was severely crumbling.
• The main character, Aeneas, first appears in the Iliad. Virgil took the stories and expanded them.
• Legend says that Virgil would write just three lines of the poem a day. Regardless of whether this is true, it is commonly accepted that Virgil had unlikely been able to finish the poem himself especially on that schedule.

"One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age."
—The Dead, Page 191

Fun Facts

• The Dubliners is a collection of fifteen stories about Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early 20th century.
• Many of the characters in Dubliners reappear in minor roles in James Joyce's Ulysses.
• Although all of his fiction is based in London, James Joyce spent most of his life outside Ireland.

"For there would be a real pleasure in watching it. He would be able to follow his mind into its secret places. This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul."
—Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray Ch. 8, page 102

Fun Facts

• The Picture of Dorian Gray was the only novel that Oscar Wilde published and it first appeared in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine.
• It is considered one of the last works of gothic horror fiction.
• When the book was published it caused a sensation due to its themes of homoeroticism.

"'We don't own your laws; we don't own your country; we stand here as
free, under God's sky, as you are; and, by the great God that made us,
we'll fight for our liberty till we die.'"
—Chapter 17, page 224

Fun Facts

• Uncle Tom's Cabin has always been controversial. At first it was because it stirred up sympathy for slaves in the South, and in more recent years because people are unhappy with the characters' stereotypes.
• The book first appeared in 40 installments of the National Era, an anti-slavery publication. In 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book form and was immediately a big success.
• Langston Hughes called Uncle Tom's Cabin America's "first protest novel" because it served as an outcry against slavery after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850.

“Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
—Chapter 1, Page 7

Fun Facts

• Robert Louis Stevenson got a law degree to please his father but never practiced any law.
• A common theme in Stevenson's work is the tension between upstanding duties and reckless abandon, which is exemplified in Treasure Island by the conflict between the respectful gentleman and carefree pirates.
• Stevenson came up with the idea for Treasure Island when drawing a map with his stepson.