The Moon of Much Gladness

Ernest Bramah

This early work by Ernest Bramah Smith was originally published in 1911. The Moon of Much Gladness Related by Kai Lung is the fourth book in the Kai Lung series. The China which Kai Lung inhabits has numerous features of the fantasy Land of Fable, and many of the embedded tales are fantasy; all are told in an ornate manner which ironically, often hilariously, exaggerates the old Chinese tradition of understatement and politesse. Ernest Bramah was born was near Manchester in 1868. He was a poor student, and dropped out of the Manchester Grammar School when sixteen years old to go into the farming business. Bramah found commercial and critical success with his first novel, The Wallet of Kai Lung, but it was his later stories of detective Max Carrados that assured him lasting fame.

The Secret of the League. The Story of a Social War

Ernest Bramah

The secret of the league is a dystopian novel written by Ernest Bramah in 1907. It was first published as What might have been: the story of a social war, but later was republished in 1909 as The secret of the league. The Secret of the League is kind of an underground oddity of a novel. Its a prophetic-warning novel, science fiction before that term was coined, largely sociopolitical but also with some charming technical extrapolations. The story centers around one mans daring and ingenious plan, enacted through a mysterious alliance called the Unity League, to stop the workings of the nations elected government in order to restore some measure of lost freedom and greatness, even at the risk of civil war. Its plot is developed rather patchily, and like most warning novels, was overtaken by real events and didnt come true. The Secret of the League was written, when the growth of the labour movement was beginning to terrify the middle class, who wrongly imagined that they were menaced from below rather than from above.

The Specimen Case

Ernest Bramah

Working name of UK author Ernest Brammah Smith (1868-1942) for all his writing; he is best-known for two series, the Max Carrados books about a blind detective, all of whose Perceptions are enormously enhanced, and a series of tales in which the Chinese Kai Lung tells stories often to stave off some unpleasant fate, like Scheherazade. At the height of his fame, Bramahs mystery tales, featuring the blind detective, appeared alongside Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes stories in the Strand Magazine, even occasionally outselling them. This early work by Ernest Bramah was originally published in 1924. A collection of twenty-one short stories which bridge, in the process of their writing, thirty years of life, one featuring Kai Lung and another featuring blind detective Max Carrados. Highly recommended this entertaining reading!

The Wallet of Kai Lung

Ernest Bramah

The Wallet of Kai Lung is a collection of fantasy stories by Ernest Bramah in which the Chinese Kai Lung tells stories often to stave off some unpleasant fate, like Scheherazade. These tales of an unlikely but marvelous China are classic works of fantasy, with each story holding a story-within-a-story. Ernest Bramahs Kai Lung is a storyteller in an imagined China, telling tales of earnest examination candidates, corrupt mandarins, beautiful maidens, alchemical potions, grasping merchants, and assorted other stereotypes from the Western imagination of China. The China which Kai Lung inhabits has numerous features of the fantasy Land of Fable, and many of the embedded tales are fantasy; all are told in an ornate manner which ironically, often hilariously, exaggerates the old Chinese tradition of understatement and politesse.