Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
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By Edward Dayes (1763-1804), via the Yale Center for British Art and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Mr Pickwick has embarked on a tour of Kent, and this sunny morning finds him leaning over the parapet of Rochester Bridge, deep in reflection.
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By Michel Martin Drolling (1786-1851), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Now that Mr Willoughby has been found, and found to be married, Elinor Dashwood has the disagreeable task of making sure that her sister feels it is all for the best.
By Adrian Pingstone, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Like the ideal Christian, the ideal teacher is one who spreads joy in everything, great or small.
© Peter Trimming, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 generic.
A charming children’s rhyme that is also a test of the clearest speaker’s diction.
By James Bretherton (?1730-1806), after William Henry Bunbury (1750-1811), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
In the opening lines of Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, the narrator explains the perverse whim that led him to leave his home shores behind.
By Willem van de Velde (1603-1707), via the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Samuel Pepys ran into a little knot of seafaring men at the Exchange, who told him some hair-raising tales about their time in Algiers.