Author Archives
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Analysis of Frederick Marryat’s The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton
While not as well written as military fiction by Frederick Marryat, The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton allowed Scottish author Thomas Hamilton to take advantage of his military experience by using it as background for fiction. Hamilton had been… Read More ›
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The Yellow Book
Titled after its bright cover, the periodical called The Yellow Book appeared to much fanfare in March 1894. It would soon gain notoriety due to its connection with decadent British writers and artists of the day. Published by John Lane,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Kingsley’s Yeast: A Problem
Charles Kingsley’s thesis novel Yeast: A Problem first ran serialized in Fraser’s Magazine in 1848. Kingsley incorporates vivid and distressing detail of poverty among England’s rural population to emphasize his themes of anti-Catholicism and sanitary reform. He also suggests that… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Gissing’s Workers in the Dawn
Often referred to as George Gissing’s first novel, Workers in the Dawn is actually his first published novel, one Gissing himself supported with a £150 investment. Not at all popular with reviewers, who criticized its excessive pessimism, attacks on organized… Read More ›
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Analysis of Sir Walter Scott’s Woodstock, or the Cavalier
Sir Walter Scott published his 17th-century-setting romance Woodstock, or the Cavalier, a Tale of the Year 1651 using his traditional approach to historical fiction. He identified an era that caught his interest for political and/or social movements, creating a heroic… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders
Thomas Hardy first published The Woodlanders as a serial in Macmillan’s Magazine between May 1886 and April 1887. It emphasizes themes of marriage and adultery, faith and duplicity, and, a favorite element for Hardy, unrequited love and the human propensity… Read More ›
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Analysis of Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins first published The Woman in White as a serial in All the Year Round between November 1859 and August 1860. Collins was praised by critics for the care he took with both plotting and character development. When the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters
Elizabeth Gaskell never completed her final novel, Wives and Daughters, due to her early death in 1865. It appeared serially in The Cornhill Magazine between August 1864 and January 1866. Her last work is considered her best, representing the pinnacle… Read More ›
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Analysis of Henry James’s What Maisie Knew
When Henry James produced What Maisie Knew late in his career, he had to employ a transcriber to write as he dictated, due to hand pain that may have been caused by arthritis. Some critics attribute to that mechanical challenge… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Kingsley’s Westward Ho!
Charles Kingsley wrote his most popular work, the patriotic Westward Ho!, for adults, although it quickly fell into the category of children’s literature. While Kingsley had long been a political radical, the onset of the Crimean War, which many British… Read More ›
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Analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston
Although Robert Louis Stevenson died in Samoa before completing his final novel, Weir of Hermiston, the fragment did appear posthumously. Because he had also written out plans for the balance of the novel, the full story is known. Even in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now
Anthony Trollope wrote The Way We Live Now to study what he termed “the commercial profligacy of the age,” and he succeeded in publishing the most savage attack on human nature since William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848). He viewed… Read More ›
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Analysis of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley
Sir Walter Scott wrote his first novel, Waverley, over several years, having completed a romance begun by Joseph Strutt in 1808. He rediscovered the manuscript two years later and shared its seven chapters with his publisher, who discouraged him from… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies
Charles Kingsley had already contributed to children’s literature when he published his fantasy The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, first read as a serial in Macmillan’s Magazine between 1862 and 1863. His juvenile novel The Heroes had… Read More ›
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Analysis of Henry James’s Washington Square
One of Henry James’s shorter novels, Washington Square ran first as a serial in The Cornhill Magazine in 1880. James considers his trademark displaced protagonist in the form of Catherine Sloper, daughter of a wealthy New York physician. While the… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Sharp’s The Washer of the Ford and The Sin Eater and Other Tales
William Sharp wrote several books adopting the persona of Fiona Macleod. While more collections of loosely linked tales than novels, two worth considering include The Washer of the Ford and The Sin Eater and Other Tales, both published in 1895…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s The Warden
Anthony Trollope’s first installment in his Barsetshire sequence, The Warden, is a quiet novel. Its story of the Reverend Septimus Harding and his struggle with conscience is masterfully presented, without need for grandiose action. When Harding’s income as warden of… Read More ›
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Charlotte Brontë’s Villette
Charlotte Brontë called on her own experience in writing her third novel, Villette. Like her other novels, this one contains various autobiographical aspects. Brontë had taught for a time in Brussels at the school of Monsieur and Madame Heger. She… Read More ›
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Frances Trollope’s The Vicar of Wrexhill
Frances Trollope wrote many novels, but most critics agree The Vicar of Wrexhill is her best. Framed in her normally intrusive, authorial didactic voice, the novel focuses on corruption in the Church of England. Her combined themes of religious and… Read More ›
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Analysis of Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield
Though written between 1761 and 1762, Oliver Goldsmith’s single novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, was not published until several years following its completion. As the story goes, Goldsmith, a hack writer ever in peril of imprisonment due to debts, pleaded… Read More ›
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