Literary Criticism
Sir Dominick Ferrand
"Levity" is not a word often applied to Henry James, but this story has about it an attractively lighthearted quality. It tells of…
The Lost Girl
"There is no mistake about it, Alvina was a lost girl. She was cut off from everything she belonged to."In this most under-valued …
To Let
‘The Forsyte Saga’ is the story of a wealthy London family stretching from the eighteen-eighties until the nineteen-twenties.To Let is the t…
Hilda Lessways
This book is the second in Bennett’s four books about life in the Five Towns (the real life Potteries in Staffordshire). It tells the story …
Don Quixote
Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered the mo…
The Fatal Three
Written by one of the most prolific authors of the 19th century The Fatal Three although not as sensational as some of her other novels serv…
The Real Thing
The Real Thing is, on one level, a somewhat ironic tale of an artist and two rather particular models. Yet it also raises questions about th…
A Brief History of English and American Literature
Henry Augustin Beers, native of Buffalo, NY and professor of English at Yale, with the help of John Fletcher Hurst (1834-1903), Methodist bi…
Jennie Gerhardt
This is a story of an innocent, caring, beautiful young girl from and extremely poor family who throughout her life is drawn into affairs wi…
The Bertrams
This is a massive effort, taking place in England and the Middle East, with a cast of thousands... Well, not thousands, fortunately, but cer…
Elizabethan Demonology
Elizabethan Demonology: An Essay in Illustration of the Belief in the Existence of Devils, and the Powers Possessed By Them, as It Was Gene…
The Princess Casamassima
Princess Casamassima can be read on several levels: first, as a political and social novel, exploring the anarchistic and revolutionary unde…
Felix Holt, The Radical
"Harold Transome is a landowner who goes against his family's political tradition (much to his mother's distress), while Felix Holt is …
Joseph Andrews
Joseph Andrews is a pioneering work of English literature that blends humor and social commentary in a tale of adventure and virtue. Followi…
The Song of the Lark
Set in the 1890s in Moonstone, a fictional place supposedly located in Colorado, The Song of the Lark is the self-portrait of an artist in t…
L'Assommoir
Émile François Zola (French pronunciation: [emil zɔˈla]) (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was an influential French writer, …
The Art of Fiction
A lecture on the art of fiction, given by the English critic Walter Besant on April 25, 1884, and an answer to the lecture by American write…
An Anonymous Story
In "An Anonymous Story," Chekhov continues to explore his favorite themes of superfluous men, ironic rakes, exploited women, and t…
The Warden
Anthony Trollope sets the scene for his wonderful Chronicles of Barsetshire with this short novel about Septimus Harding's challenged eccles…
The Quest of the Silver Fleece
The Quest of the Silver Fleece is a story of romance, race, economics and politics set around the 1900s. Here, a traditionally educated boy …