Fiction
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Fiction’
Wilkins Micawber had little to give David Copperfield at their parting, save two words of advice.
Wilkins Micawber has just been released from a spell in prison for debt, and has resolved to take his wife away from London to Plymouth, leaving David Copperfield to find new lodgings. There is little that Mr Micawber can give David in leave-taking, except two words of heartfelt advice.
Richard Hannay sees for himself how political activists trick decent people into supporting their quest for power.
Early in the Great War, Richard Hannay is in Constantinople, in pursuit of a German secret agent named Hilda von Einem. Hilda has duped a dreamy Muslim mystic into believing Germany shares his vision for society, and as Sandy Arbuthnot explains, that could be very bad both for the Arab world and for England.
Mr Easy believes he has missed out on fatherhood, and having nothing else to do, turns to political campaigning.
Mr Nicodemus Easy is a Hampshire gentleman destined to be the father of the hero of Captain Marryat’s novel. As the tale opens, however, Mr Easy has resigned himself to being childless, and has determined to make the best of it.
A faithful but unprepossessing pet is turned out of hearth and home.
This Russian folktale is a story about a tom cat who is abandoned by his fastidious owner, but shows all the philosophical resilience of cats, and reinvents himself as Cat Ivanovitch, Head Forester of all the animals of the wood. But he could not have done it without the help of a little vixen called Lisabeta, and a good deal of luck.
Alice meets Humpty Dumpty, and it turns out that she has been using words wrong all her life.
Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty exhibits all the pride that goeth before his famous fall, and also the same proprietary attitude to the meaning of words fashionable in Westminster. Here, he has just boasted of his ‘un-birthday present’ from the White King and Queen, and Alice is puzzled.
Lemuel Gulliver finds that the people of Balnibarbi just don’t appreciate their hardworking academics.
Lemuel Gulliver is visiting the distinguished Academy in Balnibarbi, where absent-minded professors pursue countless schemes for bettering society. In the School of Languages, for example, some experts plan to do away with verbs, participles and words of more than one syllable, but their colleagues are far bolder.