Literary Criticism
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Irritated and drunken, an itinerant farm-worker sells his wife and child to a stranger. Thus begins The Mayor of Casterbridge, set in rural …
The Awakening
Kate Chopin's 1899 novella The Awakening is about the personal, sexual, and artistic awakening of a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier. …
The Man in the Iron Mask
In this, the last of the Three Musketeers novels, Dumas builds on the true story of a mysterious prisoner held incognito in the French penal…
The Portrait of a Lady
The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880–81 an…
Silas Marner
Reputed as Eliot’s favourite novel Silas Marner is set in the early years of the 19th century. Marner, a weaver, is a member of a small cong…
Fathers and Sons
The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazaro…
Dubliners
Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle cl…
Master and Man
A land owner, Vasili Andreevich, takes along one of his peasants, Nikita, for a short journey to another town. He wishes to get to the town …
Bleak House
Bleak house is one of Dickens finest achievements. It was written for serialisation in 1853 when Dickens was at the peak of his career. Mont…
The Doctor's Wife
This is one of the Victorian “Sensationist” Mary Elizabeth Braddon's many novels (best known among them: “Lady Audley’s Secret”). It is extr…
The House of the Dead
The House of the Dead is a novel published in 1861 by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which portrays the life of convicts in a Siberian p…
The Touchstone
Stephen Glennard's career is falling apart and he desperately needs money so that he may marry his beautiful fiancee. He happens upon an adv…
The Warden
The Warden is the first novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire", making fun of the Church of E…
Jude the Obscure
Eleven-year-old Jude Fawley, inspired by his teacher Mr. Phillotson, who leaves Marygreen for Christminster to take a university degree, dec…
Daniel Deronda
In this enduring Victorian classic written in 1876, two stories weave in and out of each other: The first is about Gwendolen, one of Eliot's…
Cousin Betty
Cousin Betty (La Cousine Bette), published in serial format in 1846, was one of the last and greatest of Balzac's works. It was part of his …
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
One of the greatest English tragic novels, TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES (1891) is the story of a “pure woman” who is victimized both by convent…
The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
Marcus Ordeyne is a middle aged bachelor schoolmaster who has inherited both money and a title and thus is able to lead a life of leisure. O…
The Jungle
It is the end of the 19th century. Like thousands of others, the Rudkus family has emigrated from Lithuania to America in search of a better…
The Mill on the Floss
The Mill on the Floss is George Eliot’s second novel, and was published in 1860, only a year after her first, Adam Bede. It centres on the l…