Extracts from Fiction
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Fiction’
Charles Dickens sketches for us the shyly ingratiating youth who gets himself in a tangle in the presence of Beauty.
Charles Dickens’s ‘Sketches’ is a collection of character portraits in words, supposedly written for young ladies to prepare them for going about in society. His word-painting is of such dexterity that bashful young gentlemen everywhere will raise their hats to him - if they haven’t left them behind in the street.
Emma tries to reconcile her father to the unaccountable tastes of his nearest and dearest.
Mild Mr Woodhouse cannot quite forgive Mr John Knightley for carrying off his daughter Isabella as bride, even though he dotes on his little grandchildren Henry and John. It is left to Isabella’s sister Emma to calm his fear that the boys’ father is altogether too rough-and-tumble with them.
In Charles Dickens’s tale set around Mugby Junction, a man sees his life flash by like a ghostly train.
At the start of his railway-themed story ‘Mugby Junction’, Charles Dickens wants to tell us about the lead character, whom we know thus far only as a man with two black cases labelled ‘Barbox Brothers’. He is standing with the station’s sole member of staff on the otherwise deserted, rain-soaked platform at three o’clock in the morning.
Sir Walter Scott warned that schoolchildren must not expect to be entertained all the time.
The hero of Walter Scott’s historical novel Waverley, published in 1814, is Edward Waverley, a delicate child plucked from London’s fogs and taken to his father’s country estate for his health. There, the boy was allowed to direct his own education. He had curiosity, which was good, but no staying power; and Scott took a moment to reflect on how fashionable educational theory was not much help in this regard.
Sherlock Holmes has been engaged to find a missing thoroughbred, but seems more interested in some lame sheep and an idle dog.
‘Silver Blaze’, a fancied thoroughbred, has gone missing on the eve of the big money race, and his owner, Colonel Ross, has called in the police. In turn, Inspector Gregory has called in Sherlock Holmes, but as the ever-loyal Dr Watson records, the Colonel is getting impatient with London’s most fashionable ‘consulting detective’.
Monsieur St Aubert falls seriously ill on a walking tour with his daughter Emily, and before the end asks an unexpected favour.
Monsieur St Aubert’s wife has recently been carried off by a sudden illness. Now he too has fallen sick, a long way from home, and lies on his deathbed. At his side is his affectionate young daughter Emily, and in the little time remaining he extracts a solemn promise.