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The Reader, by Alexander Ver Huell, c. 1880

Book of the Month -- April 2026

Pompey 
The History of Pompey the Little was a best-seller in the 1750's but has been almost wholly forgotten. Purporting to tell the life of the eponymous lap-dog, it is a series of vignettes of both high and low life; the high life being that of various titled ladies, and the low including a beggar and a starving poet, who in turn become his owners. Many of the ladies were believed to be identifiable characters in the London of the time, though not everyone agreed with the particular identifications. The style is light and easy to read, and the vignettes of 18th-Century life, whether high or low, both accurate and charming.

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The Ex-Classics project was founded in 2000 to fill an unmet need.  When reading the blurb etc. to a book by Charles Dickens or Charlotte Bronte, say, we would often come across sentences like "Favourite reading included . . ."  If  it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us. So off we go to the library or bookshop, to be met first with blank stares and then with the information that the book has been out of print for decades. Our first two books were Gil Blas and Hudibras, which are prime examples of thisThis web site is dedicated to rescuing these works from obscurity and making them available online, both for reading directly, and for downloading.

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