Literary Criticism
Ward No. 6
The line between sanity and insanity is blurred in this classic novella by Anton Chekhov. The disillusioned idealist Dr. Rabin is in charge…
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells …
The Aspern Papers
One of James’s favorite short novels, the Aspern Papers tells of the efforts of the nameless narrator to procure the papers of a famous, bu…
The Hidden Places
Hollister, returning home from the war physically scarred but otherwise healthy and intact, finds life difficult among society, and so choos…
The Painted Veil
This Maugham classic is set in England and Hong Kong and in a cholera --ridden Chinese village in the 1920's. A committed, principled, epide…
This Side of Paradise
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1920, and taking its title from a line of the Rupert Brooke po…
Stalky & Co.
Rudyard Kipling published Stalky & Co. in 1899. Set at an English boarding school in a seaside town on the North Devon coast. (The town,…
Ball of Fat
Ball of Fat is a poignant short story by renowned French author Guy de Maupassant, set against the backdrop of the Franco-Prussian War. The …
Bartleby the Scrivener
Bartleby the Scrivener is a thought-provoking short story set against the backdrop of Wall Street, exploring themes of isolation, conformity…
Main Street
Carol Milford, a college-educated, progressive, ambitious young woman, is self-sufficient working as a librarian in St. Paul, when she meets…
Their Yesterdays
Their Yesterdays by Harold Bell Wright invites listeners into a reflective journey through the essence of human experience. This novel follo…
Steppenwolf
This controversial literary classic paints the portrait of a man who perceives himself to live in two worlds, that of the idealist, cowed an…
Uncle's Dream
Uncle’s Dream by Fyodor Dostoyevsky was written following his five year exile to Siberia where he was sent to serve in a hard labor camp. F…
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
In this enchanting fable (subtitled The Choice of Life), Rasselas and his retinue burrow their way out of the totalitarian paradise of the H…
Resurrection
Resurrection is the last of Tolstoy's major fiction works published in his lifetime. Tolstoy intended the novel as an exposition of injustic…
A Room with a View
When Lucy Honeychurch travels to Italy with her cousin, she meets George Emerson, a bohemian and an atheist who falls in love with her. Upon…
The Marrow of Tradition
In The Marrow of Tradition, Charles W. Chesnutt--using the 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina massacre as a backdrop--probes and exposes the ra…
Notes from the Underground
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short masterpiece about a ranting, slightly mad civil servant. The stylistic inventiveness, and the insights into the a…
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories showcases Mark Twain's profound exploration of human nature and morality through a collection of t…
Under Western Eyes
Under Western Eyes (1911) is a novel by Joseph Conrad. The novel takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva, Switzerland, and is vie…