Word: life
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Margrave's wide possessions. The duchess?who called her castle with the name her peasants had given her?"Maultasch" (Sack-mouth)?found a man as ugly as herself to whom she could entrust her affairs. Konrad of Frauenberg was an albino who found his enjoyment of life in eating, drinking, taking a bath, sleeping and three other kindred but less polite pleasures. He sneered at the duchess, managed her lands, killed her husband, then her son, finally her detested enemy, the lovely and well-loved Agnes von Flavon...
...ugly Duchess, the Maultasch, grew old and more hideous and very tired of life. The wisdom and gentility that, had her face been presentable, would have made her a paragon, curdled in her mind to a meagre and ineffective savagery. First she hired many cooks. Then, finding no diversion in the products of their art, she signed away all the lands she had loved, forgot her income, relinquished her estates, retreated, sick and deserted, to sun her blistered skin in a squalid cottage on a fisherman's island...
...Historical novels fall naturally into two classes; those which are novels and those which are histories. Only the few finest of the former are more valuable than the mediocre of the latter. The Ugly Duchess is one of these few. It is a novel, not a trick; in the life of the ugly duchess is written the life of all women who are ugly and who understand beauty...
...toiled in his village, loved a peasant's daughter, went to Munich to learn how to paint and came home to work miracles. For this he was first killed and then worshipped. In its intention the story is not so much a satire as a critical footnote on the life of Christ. Beyond this it is a picaresque skeleton clothed with the abundant flesh of Author Golding's almost floridly graceful prolixity...
...constant readers depend on it to guide their tastes in books. Miss Loveman makes no speeches, marches in no parades, is seldom mentioned on the radio. She gets out The Saturday Review. Accurate, tireless, tactful, intelligent she is a serene, important, almost indispensable character in the book of literary life. In honor of good deeds done quietly she was given the first copy of Claire Ambler. Her book was autographed by F. N. Doubleday, George Doran, Booth Tarkington. Eminent speechmaking critics drew succeeding copies of the de luxe edition...