DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Gates of Dawn" by Fergus Hume. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

The prolific author of vintage thrillers, Fergus Hume rose to fame following the publication of his first novel, ‘The Mystery of a Hansom Cab’. It became the best-selling mystery novel of the Victorian era and went on to inspire Arthur Conan Doyle to write ‘A Study in Scarlet’, featuring Sherlock Holmes. This comprehensive eBook presents Hume’s collected works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts appearing in digital print for the first time, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Hume’s life and works * Concise introductions to the major novels * 64 novels, with individual contents tables * Features many rare novels for the first time in digital publishing * Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts * Excellent formatting of the texts * Famous works are fully illustrated with their original artwork * Rare story collections * Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the short stories * Easily locate the short stories you want to read * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles CONTENTS: The Novels The Mystery of a Hansom Cab Professor Brankel’s Secret Madame Midas The Girl from Malta The Piccadilly Puzzle The Gentleman Who Vanished Miss Mephistopheles The Man with a Secret A Creature of the Night Monsieur Judas When I Lived in Bohemia Whom God Hath Joined The Fever of Life The Chinese Jar The Island of Fantasy The Harlequin Opal The Lone Inn The Gates of Dawn The Third Volume The White Prior Tracked by a Tattoo The Clock Struck One The Rainbow Feather The Devil-Stick The Red-Headed Man The Silent House in Pimlico The Indian Bangle The Crimson Cryptogram The Vanishing of Tera The Bishop’s Secret The Lady from Nowhere A Traitor in London The Millionaire Mystery A Woman’s Burden The Pagan’s Cup The Turnpike House A Coin of Edward VII The Silver Bullet The Yellow Holly The Mandarin’s Fan The Red Window The White Room The Secret Passage Lady Jim of Curzon Street The Opal Serpent The Wooden Hand The Black Patch The Purple Fern The Amethyst Cross The Sealed Message The Green Mummy The Crowned Skull The Sacred Herb The Solitary Farm The Peacock of Jewels The Mikado Jewel The Spider The Pink Shop The Mystery Queen Red Money A Son of Perdition In Queer Street The Lost Parchment The Red Bicycle The Short Story Collections Chronicles of Faeryland The Dwarf’s Chamber and Other Stories Hagar of the Pawn-Shop The Dancer in Red The Short Stories List of Short Stories in Chronological Order List of Short Stories in Alphabetical Order Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks

When the learned first gave serious attention to popular ballads, from the time of Percy to that of Scott, they laboured under certain disabilities. The Comparative Method was scarcely understood, and was little practised. Editors were content to study the ballads of their own countryside, or, at most, of Great Britain. Teutonic and Northern parallels to our ballads were then adduced, as by Scott and Jamieson. It was later that the ballads of Europe, from the Faroes to Modern Greece, were compared with our own, with EuropeanMärchen, or children’s tales, and with the popular songs, dances, and traditions of classical and savage peoples. The results of this more recent comparison may be briefly stated. Poetry begins, as Aristotle says, in improvisation. Every man is his own poet, and, in moments of stronge motion, expresses himself in song. A typical example is the Song of Lamech in Genesis—“I have slain a man to my wounding, And a young man to my hurt.” Instances perpetually occur in the Sagas: Grettir, Egil, Skarphedin, are always singing. In Kidnapped, Mr. Stevenson introduces “The Song of the Sword of Alan,” a fine example of Celtic practice: words and air are beaten out together, in the heat of victory. In the same way, the women sang improvised dirges, like Helen; lullabies, like the lullaby of Danae in Simonides, and flower songs, as in modern Italy. Every function of life, war, agriculture, the chase, had its appropriate magical and mimetic dance and song, as in Finland, among Red Indians, and among Australian blacks. “The deeds of men” were chanted by heroes, as by Achilles; stories were told in alternate verse and prose; girls, like Homer’s Nausicaa, accompanied dance and ball play, priests and medicine-men accompanied rites and magical ceremonies by songs. These practices are world-wide, and world-old. The thoroughly popular songs, thus evolved, became the rude material of a professional class of minstrels, when these arose, as in the heroic age of Greece. A minstrel might be attached to a Court, or a noble; or he might go wandering with song and harp among the people. In either case, this class of men developed more regular and ample measures. They evolved the hexameter; the laisse of the Chansons de Geste; the strange technicalities of Scandinavian poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of Greece. The narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or the mediaeval rhymed romance. The metre of improvised verse changed into the artistic lyric. These lyric forms were fixed, in many cases, by the art of writing. But poetry did not remain solely in professional and literary hands. The mediaeval minstrels and jongleurs (who may best be studied in Léon Gautier’s Introduction to his Epopées Françaises) sang in Court and Camp. The poorer, less regular brethren of the art, harped and played conjuring tricks, in farm and grange, or at street corners. The foreign newer metres took the place of the old alliterative English verse. But unprofessional men and women did not cease to make and sing.

This book provides a compact guide to all aspects of English literature. For this edition, existing entries have been updated and new entries have been added on contemporary writers such as Jim Crace and Pat Barker.

Reproduction of the original.