Who knew Zelda Fitzgerald wrote stories before Scott entered her life? In 1918, Zelda Sayre, later Zelda Fitzgerald, won a prize for this story, which she published in the Sidney Lanier High School Literary Journal. She was seventeen or eighteen years old when she wrote it; she would soon meet...

Considered the Grande Dame of American letters, Edith Wharton wrote 40 books in 40 years, including The Age of Innocence, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize for Literature, thus becoming the first woman to do so. In 1904, a magazine commissioned Wharton to write a series of articles about...

“And so,” the story writers used to say, “they lived happily ever after.” Um-m-m—maybe. After the glamour had worn off, and the glass slippers were worn out, did the Prince never find Cinderella’s manner redolent of the kitchen hearth; and was it never necessary that he remind her to be more...

The story was written on April 19, 1894, and first published in Vogue on December 6, 1894, under the title “The Dream of an Hour,” one of nineteen Kate Chopin stories that Vogue published. “In the mid - to late 1890s, Vogue was the place where Chopin published her most daring and...

One of the most famous artists in history, Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) was also a man with another powerful passion—for books. An insatiable reader, Van Gogh spent his life hungrily consuming as many books as he could. He read, reread, and copied out books in Dutch, English, and French. He...

When a French actress becomes an English governess, things go awry. Obviously. Before Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy (yes, I am talking about Little Women by Louisa May Alcott), there was Jean Muir - a professional French actress turned English governess, a main character of Alcott’s novella Behind a...

"A Kidnapped Santa Claus" is a Christmas-themed short story by American writer L. Frank Baum; it has been called "one of Baum's most beautiful stories" and constitutes an influential contribution to the mythology of Christmas. "A Kidnapped Santa Claus" was first published in the December 1904...

Only seven years had passed since the Wright brothers' illustrious maiden flight, and the early aviation frenzy has begun. Teenagers Peggy Prescott and her brother Roy share a love of aviation that they inherited from their late father. Mr. Prescott had always dreamed of building...

“Hurrah! Hurrah! Here I am again, sang the Christmas Sprite. He shook himself all, for he’d been fast asleep all the year, and he polished up his pretty wings until they shone. Then away into the snowy world he flew, peeping down the chimneys, peering through the windows, and laughing and...

“Pre nás, náš dom nebol neživý objekt - mal srdce, dušu i oči, ktorými sa na nás pozeral. Bol našou súčasťou. Žili sme pod jeho ochranou a v pohode jeho dobrodenia. Vždy, keď sme sa vrátili domov po dlhšej dobe, jeho tvár sa rozžiarila a vrúcne nás privítal - a my sme nemohli vstúpiť doň bez...