A child holds a shell to his ear and hears the ocean—or so it seems. William J. Long begins his journey through literature with that small mystery: how can words make us hear a world we had never noticed? Writing in the early twentieth century, Long traces English literature from its Anglo-Saxon beginnings through the Victorian age, asking readers to do more than study names and dates. A poem or story, he argues, can delight us while revealing the life of its writer and the age that shaped it; the finest works speak across centuries because they touch feelings shared by all people. But with books pouring from the presses, how can we tell which voices will endure—and what hidden harmonies might they teach us to hear? With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world. Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.
