Leo Tolstoy Last Will

Enjoy reading this copy of the Last Will of the great English novelist, Charles Dickens (1812-1870).

• Charles Dickens was responsible for creating some of English literature's most iconic characters, including Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist, Fagin, David Copperfield, and Tiny Tim. He was the most popular writer of his day and remains one of the most popular of all time.
• Dickens' work touched upon many of the problems of Victorian London and often carried a message of social reform. Many of his novels were serialized in magazines.
• Unlike other authors who would complete an entire novel before serializing it, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. He would often end the episode with a cliffhanger situation which created an air of anticipation from his public as they awaited the next instalment.
• His work is still popular today, and his novels and short stories have never been out of print.

Source: Wikipedia.org.

Download a free copy of the Last Will of American novelist Ernest (Papa) Hemingway (1899-1961).

• The works of Ernest Miller Hemingway are considered classics of American literature. His writing style, known as the iceberg theory, was characterized by economy and understatement, and it influenced many other 20th century writers. His characters exuded authenticity, which reverberated with his public.
• In his younger years Hemingway worked as a reporter until World War I when he became an ambulance driver in Italy. This experience formed the basis for A Farewell to Arms.
• After the war he worked in Paris as a foreign correspondence, which led to him covering the Spanish Civil War, after which he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. During World War II he was present at D-Day and the liberation of Paris. In the midst of all this, he found time to get married four times.
• Hemingway's public persona was that of a hard drinking, hard living adventure seeker. After publishing The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway went on safari to Africa and was almost killed in a plane crash, which left him in ill health for most of the rest of his life.
• He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.
• Hemingway committed suicide at his home in 1961.

Source: Wikipedia.org

Download a free copy of the Last Will of fantasy horror author H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937).

• Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American fantasy, horror and science fiction novelist best known for the Cthulhu Mythos.
• He was born into a wealthy family but their financial prospects changed drastically after his grandfather passed away and his mother was institutionalized.
• Lovecraft's works advanced the theories of cosmicism and the decline of civilization
• Sadly, he never achieved any measure of literary success during his lifetime. His work only became popular during the latter half of the 20th century and he is now considered one of the most important writers of supernatural horror.

Biographical information courtesy Wikipedia.org.

Download a free copy of the Last Will of John Calvin (1509-1564).

• John Calvin (Jean Cauvin) was a French theologian, pastor and writer during the Protestant Reformation, and a principal figure in the development of the Christian theology system which was later called Calvinism.
• Calvin broke away from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530 but was forced to flee to Switzerland when religious tensions in Franch provoked violent uprisings against the Protestants.
• As church leader, introduced new forms of church government and liturgy in Geneva, despite the opposition of several powerful families who tried to suppress his authority. Calvin spent his final years promoting the Reformation both in Geneva and throughout Europe.
• Calvin was influenced by the Augustinian tradition, and expounded the doctrine of predestination and the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation.
• Calvin's writing and preachings provided the seeds for the branch of theology that bears his name. The Presbyterian and other Reformed churches, which look to Calvin as a chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world.

Download a free copy of the Last Will of Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain (1835-1910).

• Samuel Clemens, better known to the world as Mark Twain, was an American-born author and humorist best known for his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has been called "the Great American Novel". His writings reflected his childhood growing up in Missouri and his experiences as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River.
• After serving briefly in the Confederate militia, Clemens moved out west and became a reporter. It was then that he adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain, a riverboat pilot's slang phrase that means the water is at least two fathoms deep and easy to traverse.
• Mark Twain's keen wit and biting satire earned praise from critics and peers, and his humor made him a very popular figure with royalty, presidents and common folk alike.
• He went bankrupt in the depression of 1893-94 and, intent on paying back his debts, he wrote a number of works to recoup his funds. When he died in 1910, he was lauded as the greatest American humorist of his age, and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature".
• Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, exactly two weeks after the perihelion of Haley's Comet, which appears every 75 years. He died on April 21, 1910, the day following the comet's next perihelion.
• He remains one of the most popular American writers of all time.

Source: Wikipedia.org