Literary Criticism
Father Sergius
Prince Stepan Kasatsky experiences a disappointment with his fiancé and decides to become a monk! There is a story line, but beneath …
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…
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…
The Country of the Pointed Firs
The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) is considered Jewett’s finest work, described by Henry James as her “beautiful little quantum of achi…
Against The Grain
Against The Grain is a provocative exploration of aestheticism and the complexities of modern existence, penned by Joris-Karl Huysmans. This…
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…
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 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…
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
This is Mark Twain's vicious and amusing review of Fenimore Cooper's literary art. It is still read widely in academic circles. Twain's essa…
An Ideal Husband
The "Ideal Husband" of the title is Sir Robert Chiltern, with his equally upright wife Lady Chiltern. He has never committed a cri…
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…
Ulysses
Ulysses is a groundbreaking novel in which Irish author James Joyce explores realism through stream-of-consciousness technique and shifting …
Chronicles of Avonlea
In this first collection of stories following the characters from the "Anne of Green Gables" series, we see 12 vignettes into the …
Agnes Grey
The novel tells the story of Agnes Grey, the daughter of a minister, whose family comes to financial ruin. Desperate to earn the money to ca…
The Story of an Unhappy Friendship
The Story of an Unhappy Friendship offers a unique glimpse into the complex relationship between Robert Sherard and the renowned playwright …
The Professor
The Professor follows the journey of William Crimsworth, a young man navigating the complexities of ambition, love, and self-discovery in 19…
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…
The Money Moon
Rejected in love, the incredibly rich (but appropriately modest) George Bellew walks into a small English village populated with a cast of m…
The Devil's Pool
George Sand (the pen name of Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin 1804-1876) is famous for flaunting the conventions of behavior expected of women o…
An Anonymous Story
In "An Anonymous Story," Chekhov continues to explore his favorite themes of superfluous men, ironic rakes, exploited women, and t…