Author Archives
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Analysis of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford
An episodic novel of linked stories set in Cranford, a fictitious country town in northern England. First serialized in Household Words, a weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens, between December 1851 and May 1853, Cranford appeared in volume form in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cousin Phyllis
Cousin Phyllis is one of Elizabeth Gaskell’s later works and one in which she returns to the rural Cheshire of her youth. Cousin Phyllis was first published by George Smith in his Cornhill Magazine in four monthly parts from November… Read More ›
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Analysis of Angela Carter’s The Courtship of Mr. Lyon
Originally published in British Vogue, “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” is one of the nine pieces contained in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979), Angela Carter’s feminist rewriting of traditional fairy tales. In particular, “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon”… Read More ›
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Analysis of Rudyard Kipling’s The Courting of Dinah Shadd
One of Rudyard Kipling’s many stories of life among noncommissioned soldiers in India, “The Courting of Dinah Shadd” was first published in Harper’s Weekly in the United States in 1890. It also gave its name to the volume of short… Read More ›
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Analysis of Helen Simpson’s Constitutional
In the title story of Helen Simpson’s fourth collection, a science teacher takes her regular lunchtime stroll around Hampstead Heath. This is her “constitutional,” a reassuringly old-fashioned concept, far removed from power-walking, jogging, or similar goal-oriented forms of exercise: “The… Read More ›
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Analysis of Angela Carter’s The Company of Wolves
One of Angela Carter‘s most famous short stories, “The Company of Wolves” was first published in the innovative and imaginative 1979 collection of fairy-tale themed stories, The Bloody Chamber. “The Company of Wolves” skillfully interweaves peasant superstitions, such as old… Read More ›
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Analysis of Bram Stoker’s The Coming of Abel Behenna
This story collected in the posthumously published Dracula’s Guest is about the power of the past to haunt the present. Bram Stoker also makes use of the plot device of the fatal return, a popular narrative in many 19th-century texts…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Will Self’s Cock and Bull
A literary sensation on the strength of his breakout collection of interwoven short stories—1991’s The Quantity Theory of Insanity—Will Self continued to impress with 1992’s Cock and Bull, a pair of novellas that take conventional notions of gender and turn… Read More ›
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Analysis of Beryl Bainbridge’s Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie
The decline of British power and influence in the international sphere following World War II was paralleled by substantial changes in life in Britain. The cherished, if idealistic, version of England as a “green and pleasant land” was subject to… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol
The first of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Books, A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas is a fairy-tale-like ghost story that has contributed much to the formation of the Christmas story as a genre. Written in October… Read More ›
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Analysis of Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous
This short novel is one of the products of Rudyard Kipling’s residence in the United States from 1892 to 1896. What Kipling described as a “boy’s story” was first published in serial form in McClure’s Magazine in the United States… Read More ›
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Analysis of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Captain of the Pole-Star
While still a 23- year-old medical student, before creating the wildly popular character of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle published “The Captain of the Pole-Star.” Conan Doyle’s tale is a ghost story set aboard an arctic expedition, narrated by John… Read More ›
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Analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost
First published in the Court and Society Review, “The Canterville Ghost,” subtitled “a Hylo-Idealistic Romance,” concerns an American minister, Mr. Hiram B. Otis, who buys a haunted English mansion from Lord Canterville. When warned about the ghost by Canterville, Mr…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Dylan Thomas’s The Burning Baby
Entered in the “red notebook” (a notebook containing drafts of 9 stories) and dated September 1934, “The Burning Baby” was published in Contemporary Poetry and Prose in May 1936. The story is characteristic of Thomas’s early prose work with its… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Eliot’s Brother Jacob
George Eliot described her short story “Brother Jacob” (written in 1860, published in the Cornhill 1864) as a “slight tale.” “Brother Jacob,” a story about deception, imperial venture, and self-interest, was the first piece written after her true identity had… Read More ›
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Analysis of A.L. Kennedy’s Breaking Sugar
This story is from A. L. Kennedy’s Original Bliss. In a number of very favorable reviews of this collection, critics noted Kennedy’s predilection for characters who can be moved only by extreme circumstances, as if their responses have been dulled… Read More ›
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Analysis of Arthur Machen’s The Bowmen
“The Bowmen” first appeared in the Evening News (London) on September 29, 1914. Set in World War I, this supernatural tale recounts a fictional battle between British and German soldiers. The British forces are on the verge of suffering a… Read More ›
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Analysis of Elizabeth Taylor’s The Blush
First published in the New Yorker and collected in The Blush and Other Stories, this is perhaps Elizabeth Taylor’s most anthologized short story. A. S. Byatt included it in the Oxford Book of English Short Stories (1998), and it was… Read More ›
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Analysis of G. K. Chesterton’s The Blue Cross
“The Blue Cross” appeared in The Storyteller magazine in September 1910 and heralded the first appearance of G. K. Chesterton’s most famous and enduring creation, Father Brown. The story, and the five further stories that followed at monthly intervals, were… Read More ›
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Analysis of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber
The Bloody Chamber collects 10 of Angela Carter’s short stories, linked by their common source material, familiar tales from the folk tradition including “Bluebeard,” “Snow White,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” As the… Read More ›
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