Literary Criticism
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 …
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 …
The Colonel's Dream
In this novel, Chesnutt described the hopelessness of Reconstruction in a post-Civil War South that was bent on reestablishing the former st…
The Perfect Wagnerite
The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring (originally published London, 1898) is a philosophical commentary on Richard Wagne…
The House Behind the Cedars
In this, Chesnutt's first novel, he tells the tragic story of love set against a backdrop of racism, miscegenation and “passing” during the …
Ulysses
Ulysses is a groundbreaking novel in which Irish author James Joyce explores realism through stream-of-consciousness technique and shifting …
The Princess Casamassima
Princess Casamassima can be read on several levels: first, as a political and social novel, exploring the anarchistic and revolutionary unde…
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…
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…
The Professor
The Professor follows the journey of William Crimsworth, a young man navigating the complexities of ambition, love, and self-discovery in 19…
Old Rose And Silver
The novel follows the lives of Rose and her widowed Aunt, Madame Francesca Bernard, along with young visitor and cousin Isabel, whose lives …
L'Assommoir
Émile François Zola (French pronunciation: [emil zɔˈla]) (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was an influential French writer, …
Swann's Way
Swann's Way introduces readers to the intricate world of Marcel Proust's monumental work, In Search of Lost Time. This first volume unfolds …
Roderick Hudson
Published as a serial in 1875, Roderick Hudson is James's first important novel. The theme of Americans in Europe, so important in much of J…
The Metropolis
In this 1907 novel about the extravagant life of New York City’s high society, the author of The Jungle, presents a portrait of the wealthy …
The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles
The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles invites listeners to explore the haunting beauty and stark realities of the Galápagos Islands throu…
Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens
“These papers were originally published as prefaces to the separate books of Dickens in one of the most extensive of those cheap libraries o…
Barchester Towers
This is the second in Trollope’s ‘Barsetshire’ series of novels. The later novels in the series move away from Barchester itself but 'Barche…
Lost Illusions
Ève and David (1843) is the final book in Balzac’s Lost Illusions trilogy, which is part of his sweeping set of novels collectively t…
The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.
First published as a serial in Fraser's Magazine in 1844 as The Luck of Barry Lyndon, The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq is a picaresque novel…