An Esoteric Library

I used to hoard books. Now I hoard epubs. I keep them on my old kindle; I have nearly 2,000 books– and the stack never gets any heavier! Most of these come from Gutenberg, because I like the old authors, and also– free downloads. Many of these gutenberg files have been edited by me, because I like a decent-looking page to read, and also illustrations if I can get them. Here’s a catalogue of some of them, as I fix ’em up.


E. Nesbit She is probably best known for her series “The Railway Children” but her output exceeded forty books for children alone.  I have a baker’s dozen that I am working my way through.

Read online; a chapter (about writing poetry) from  The Treasure Seekers

Doctor Dolittle; Seven, thus far. More, I sincerely hope, to come.

Some oddities; The King of Gee-Whiz, how’s that for a name! also a lovely half-a-story by the great Walter De la Mare,  two riffs on Peter Pan from J. M. Barrie, and adventures in baby-sitting from the Victorian humorist W. Heath Robinson.

Frank R. Stockton; The writer of the classic; “The Lady? or, The Tiger?” will charm and  beguile you with his wide range of interests and his fluid storytelling skills.

Read online; The Floating Prince

A Literary Miscellany; The glorious Steppenwolf, with new illustrations from a Spanish artist, and The King In Yellow a forerunner of the Lovecraftian style of horror.

This is The Con-Fusion

Concatenation, Construction, Conversation, Continuation, Fusion.

These are our blogs;

The Principle of Moments; a multi-braned, multi-brained, experiment-in-progress.

The Dancing Goddesses ; addendum and annotation for the book of that name, by author Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Ronald Smart Writes;  stories and memoirs with a mid-century touch

These are our services;

An esoteric library of epub files 

The Story of Little Cacinella

Little Cacinella (ladybug) looked around and said, “Very nice.” She stretched her tiny wings, rubbed one little thin leg against the other, looked around again and said:”How very, very nice! How warm the sun! How blue the sky! How green the grass! How very, very nice! and all this is mine!”

THE MEZZOTINT

A parcel of any kind always arrives a day later than you expect it, and that of Mr Britnell proved, as I believe the right phrase goes, no exception to the rule. It was delivered at the museum by the afternoon post of Saturday, after Mr Williams had left his work, and it was accordingly brought round to his rooms in college by the attendant, in order that he might not have to wait over Sunday before looking through it and returning such of the contents as he did not propose to keep. And here he found it when he came in to tea, with a friend.

Chapter 4. Good Hunting

‘A Princess or a poetry book,’ said Noel sleepily. He was lying on his back on the sofa, kicking his legs. ‘Only I shall look for the Princess all by myself. But I’ll let you see her when we’re married.’
‘Have you got enough poetry to make a book?’ Dicky asked that, and it was rather sensible of him, because when Noel came to look there were only seven of his poems that any of us could understand.

(an excerpt from The Treasure Seekers, by E. Nesbit.)

The Floating Prince

If I want a kingdom, I must build up one for myself, and that is just what I will do. I will gather together my subjects as I go along. The first person I meet shall be my chief councilor of state, the second shall be head of the army, the third shall be admiral of the navy, the next shall be chief treasurer, and then I will collect subjects of various classes.”

from the collection of stories by Frank Stockton