Online books, short stories and essays at this website

This website is the online repository for a number of books, short stories and essays either not found elsewhere on the web or introduced here first. There may also be some items here that are slightly edited versions of pages from other websites if they seem to fit into a niche here. If I don't acknowledge permission to use a work then I believe the U.S. copyright laws permit using the work. Additionally, there may be a few links to other websites if I think they are appropriate.

Conrad Aiken

A short story published in the June, 1922 issue of The Dial magazine.

T.S. Eliot

The Waste Land is perhaps Eliot's masterwork. This long poem is quite complex and dificult to understand. At another section of this website is a resource of over 1,000 webpages to help you explore the poem.

Not all of Eliot's poems are in his Collected Poems. Ones written while he was attending Harvard University and printed in The Harvard Advocate are not.

Eliot's only work of fiction. A short story published in 1917 in two parts in the May and September issues of The Little Review.

Eliot's 1917 book reviewing his friend's Ezra Pound's poetry (originally published anonymously).

Eliot's 1921 essay "Andrew Marvell" about the sytle of that poet.

Eliot's 1919 book review/essay "The Preacher as Artist" that compares the sermons of John Donne to those of Hugh Latimer and Lancelot Andrewes. There is also a brief comparison of Donne's sermons to the Fire-Sermon of the Buddha.

Eliot's "London Letter" essays for The Dial magazine:

Hermann Hesse

Hesse's book Blick ins Chaos reprinted some of his essays. English translations of three were printed in The Dial and The Criterion magazines in 1922 and now are available at this website.

Oliver Huckel

Originally published by Crowell (New York) in 1903 this is Huckel's poetic rendering of Richard Wagner's libretto to his opera Parsifal. The illustrations done by Franz Stassen are also provided.

Marie Larisch

Countess Marie Larisch was born into Bavaria's royal House of Wittelsbach. She became a confident her aunt, Empress Elisabeth of Austria. The first part of the book is filled with antedotes about her family. The second part concerns the Mayerling scandal of 1889. This involved the deaths of her cousin Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera. Countess Larisch became persona non grata because she had introduced Mary and Rudolph and, even by her own accounts, she had been serving as a go-between for Rudolph and Mary and was passing money from the Prince to the Baroness.

Woodrow Wilson

The title page well describes this book:

Why We Are At War - Messages to the Congress, January to April, 1917 by Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, with the President's proclamation of war April 6, 1917 and his message to the American people April 15, 1917

Jesse L. Weston

In her book From Ritual to Romance Weston attempts to convince us that the Holy Grail romances were based on actual ancient rituals. This work will be of interest to those interested in Arthurian legends and to fans of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land (in his first note to the poem he wrote "Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance . . .").