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The Reader, by Alexander Ver Huell, c. 1880

Book of the Month -- December 2024 

Portrait of Barry Pain<
This book, originally published in 1897, tells the story of Claudius Sandell, a down-and-out gentleman who makes a deal with an eccentric scientist -- in return for eight days of unlimited money to enjoy himself with, he binds himself for life to be the scientist's slave -- or worse. Things become more complicated for him when he meets a girl, and would like to go back on his bargain. To quote George Orwell in his essay Good Bad Books: "A cut above most of these [popular writers of the 1890s] was Barry Pain. Some of Pain's humorous writings are, I suppose, still in print, but to anyone who comes across it I recommend what must now be a very rare book–THE OCTAVE OF CLAUDIUS, a brilliant exercise in the macabre."

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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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Max Adeler contemplating the Patent Office Report, by Arthur B. Frost

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