1) William Morris (England,1890) News from Nowhere
- It was a beautiful night of early winter, the air just sharp enough to be refreshing after the hot room and the stinking railway carriage. The wind, which had lately turned a point or two north of west, had blown the sky clear of all cloud save a light fleck of two which went swiftly down the heavens. There was a young moon halfway up the sky, and as the home-farer caught sight of it, tangled in the branches of a tall old elm, he could scarce bring to his mind the shabby London suburb where he was, and he felt as if he were in a pleasant country place--pleasanter, indeed, than the deep country was as he had known it.
2) W. H. Hudson (England, 1887) A Crystal Age
- http://d.scribd.com/docs/1ypib7382vg6h7sb5zxc.pdf
The season was late summer--that was plain to see; the ground was moist, as
if from recent showers, and the earth everywhere had that intense living
greenness with which it reclothes itself when the greater heats are
over; but the foliage of the woods was already beginning to be touched
here and there with the yellow and russet hues of decay. A more tranquil
and soul-satisfying scene could not be imagined: the dear old mother
earth was looking her very best; while the shifting golden sunlight, the
mysterious haze in the distance, and the glint of a wide stream not very
far off, seemed to spiritualize her "happy autumn fields," and bring
them into a closer kinship with the blue over-arching sky.
3) Edward Bellamy (USA, 1888) Looking Backward
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/BELLAMY/toc.html
- I myself was rich and also educated, and possessed, therefore, all the elements of happiness enjoyed by the most fortunate in that age. Living in luxury, and occupied only with the pursuit of the pleasures and refinements of life, I derived the means of my support from the labor of others, rendering no sort of service in return. My parents and grand- parents had lived in the same way, and I expected that my descendants, if I had any, would enjoy a like easy existence.
- Our marriage only waited on the completion of the house which I was building for our occupancy in one of the most desirable parts of the city, that is to say, a part chiefly inhabited by the rich. For it must be understood that the comparative desirability of different parts of Boston for residence depended then, not on natural features, but on the character of the neighboring population. Each class or nation lived by itself, in quarters of its own. A rich man living among the poor, an educated man among the uneducated, was like one living in isolation among a jealous and alien race.
4) Edward Bulwer –Lytton (England, 1870) The Coming Race
- http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1951/1951-h/1951-h.htm
I am a native of _____, in the United States of America. My ancestors migrated from England in the reign of Charles II.; and my grandfather was not undistinguished in the War of Independence. My family, therefore, enjoyed a somewhat high social position in right of birth; and being also opulent, they were considered disqualified for the public service. My father once ran for Congress, but was signally defeated by his tailor. After that event he interfered little in politics, and lived much in his library. I was the eldest of three sons, and sent at the age of sixteen to the old country, partly to complete my literary education, partly to commence my commercial training in a mercantile firm at Liverpool. My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth
5) H.G Wells (early 20th century,England,1905) A Modern Utopia
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wells/hg/w45mu/
- Our inn is one of those inns and lodging houses which have a minimum tariff, inns which are partly regulated, and, in the default of private enterprise, maintained and controlled by the World State throughout the entire world. It is one of several such establishments in Lucerne. It possesses many hundreds of practically self-cleaning little bedrooms, equipped very much after the fashion of the rooms we occupied in the similar but much smaller inn at Hospenthal, differing only a little in the decoration. There is the same dressing-room recess with its bath, the same graceful proportion in the succinct simplicity of its furniture.
0 comments:
Post a Comment