Errata on p. [954]-956.

This volume covers two hundred years of history with the purpose of portraying "the lives and actions of our puritan ancestors. They came to find an asylum for religious liberty They found few helps and many hindrances to their growth and prosperity in a foreign land and under foreign rule, and they therefore undertook to rear a church and found a colony at the same time in the wilderness, whose vital principle should be the religious ideas for whose sake they had resigned the honors and braved the power of the English crown The design of Local History is to preserve the memory of local events and enterprise; to record the manners and customs, the character and services, the sacrifices, the toils and the sufferings of our father; to glean from old records and family traditions, material which has been passed over by the historians of the State and country." In addition to the history, this volume contains biographies and genealogies as well as illustrations to highlight important places and to portray prominent citizens. A surname index and a genealogy index are included. CD2982HB - $19.95

Excerpted from Davis' History of Wallingford, Conn., this work treats some seventy early Wallingford families. Each family history commences with a paragraph on the origins and background of the earliest known settler and proceeds from there with a recitation of descents until all available data are either brought up to date or exhausted. The families treated in the work are as follows: Abernathy, Alling/Allen, Andrews, Atwater, Bartholomew, Beach, Beadles, Bellamy, Benham, Blakeslee, Bristol, Brockett, Bunnel, Carrington, Clark, Cook, Cowles/Coles, Culver, Curtis, Doolittle, Dutton, Fenn, Foot, Gaylord, Hall, Hart, Hitchcock, Holt, Hotchkiss, Hough, How, Hull, Humiston, Ives, Johnson, Jones, Kirkland, Lewis, Martin, Mattoon, Merriman, Miles, Mix, Moss, Munson, Noyes, Parker, Preston, Reynolds, Royce, Stanley, Street, Thompson, Thorp, Tuttle, Tyler, Whittelsey, and Wilcox. With a new index of 7,500 names.

The small Hebridean island of Alsaig is facing a crisis. It is famous for its only export, a particularly fine malt whisky, upon which most of the islanders depend for their livelihood. But the distillery is threatened with a takeover by an American firm, which would not only make many of the workforce redundant but also adulterate the product. But owner Alisdair Matheson is refusing to sell, despite threats of sabotage and an attempt on his life. The situation is complicated further by an actual murder on the island, which the locals believe to have been committed by American Mike MacDonald. Tension mounts as storms lash the island, isolating it from the outside world and locking the killer in with the islanders.

JACK LONDON (1876-1916), American novelist, born in San Francisco, the son of an itinerant astrologer and a spiritualist mother. He grew up in poverty, scratching a living in various legal and illegal ways -robbing the oyster beds, working in a canning factory and a jute mill, serving aged 17 as a common sailor, and taking part in the Klondike gold rush of 1897. This various experience provided the material for his works, and made him a socialist. "The son of the Wolf" (1900), the first of his collections of tales, is based upon life in the Far North, as is the book that brought him recognition, "The Call of the Wild" (1903), which tells the story of the dog Buck, who, after his master ́s death, is lured back to the primitive world to lead a wolf pack. Many other tales of struggle, travel, and adventure followed, including "The Sea-Wolf" (1904), "White Fang" (1906), "South Sea Tales" (1911), and "Jerry of the South Seas" (1917). One of London ́s most interesting novels is the semi-autobiographical "Martin Eden" (1909). He also wrote socialist treatises, autobiographical essays, and a good deal of journalism.

The twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes is a major figure in European literature. His courtly romances fathered the Arthurian tradition and influenced countless other poets in England as well as on the continent. Yet because of the difficulty of capturing his swift-moving style in translation, English-speaking audiences are largely unfamiliar with the pleasures of reading his poems. Now, for the first time, an experienced translator of medieval verse who is himself a poet provides a translation of Chrétien’s major poem, Yvain, in verse that fully and satisfyingly captures the movement, the sense, and the spirit of the Old French original. Yvain is a courtly romance with a moral tenor; it is ironic and sometimes bawdy; the poetry is crisp and vivid. In addition, the psychological and the socio-historical perceptions of the poem are of profound literary and historical importance, for it evokes the emotions and the values of a flourishing, vibrant medieval past.