Author Archives
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Analysis of Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda
Of Anthony Hope’s many short stories and various novels, The Prisoner of Zenda remains his best known and enjoyed, praised by contemporaries such as Robert Louis Stevenson, followed by its less successful sequel, Rupert of Hentzau (1898). The novel offers… Read More ›
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Analysis of Henry James’s The Princess Casamassima
Henry James first published The Princess Casamassima as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly between September 1885 and October 1886. He reintroduces the princess as a character from a previous novel, Roderick Hudson (1875), in which the sculptor Hudson dies in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s The Prime Minister
The Prime Minister took its place as Anthony Trollope’s fifth book in the Palliser sequence. It first appeared as a serial between November 1875 and June 1876, before its issue in four volumes. While many of Trollope’s contemporaries, including Henry… Read More ›
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Analysis of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady appeared first as installments in The Atlantic Monthly (1880–81), where readers recognized in its protagonist, Isabel Archer, a more mature version of the title character from his earlier novella, Daisy Miller (1879). Like… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress
The son of a village tinker with little schooling, John Bunyan experienced a tremendous religious conflict that led him to write a book in two parts that would become one of the most popular of all time, translated into dozens… Read More ›
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Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde’s version of the Faust temptation tale, The Picture of Dorian Gray, proved so popular that it was later converted to drama and opera and imitated by other writers in subsequent novels. It first appeared in 1890 in Lippincott’s… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux
Anthony Trollope published the fourth entry in his Palliser series, Phineas Redux, first as a serial in The Graphic between July 1873 and January 1874. It appeared seven years after its predecessor, Phineas Finn, which introduced the adventurous protagonist named… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Finn
Anthony Trollope continued throughout his career to focus his novels on everyday life. As the trend of sensation fiction faded in the late 1860s, Trollope began a new trend of his own, adding the theme of politics to his writing…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Jane Austen’s Persuasion
Jane Austen composed Persuasion, her final completed novel, between 1815 and 1816; it would be published posthumously in 1818. Unwell and forced to return to Bath, a location she had celebrated in her younger years, Austen produced a story with… Read More ›
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Analysis of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Pelham
In his first novel, Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman, Edward Bulwer-Lytton shaped a character named Henry Pelham who introduced an enduring ritual into English society. A dandy known for his pretentious behavior, Pelham dressed in black for dinner,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Caroline Clive’s Paul Ferroll
Caroline Clive’s popular novel Paul Ferroll was likely published at Clive’s expense, first advertised for sale in Publisher’s Circular. While Clive (1801–73) had published poetry, the novel was her first, and ultimately most successful, attempt at fiction. By March 1856,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela
Long touted as the first English novel, or at the least the first epistolary novel, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela has since had both those positions questioned in light of work by earlier writers, most notably Aphra Behn. It remains of extreme… Read More ›
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Oxford Movement
The 19th-century Oxford Movement sought to reform the English church, reconstituting it on High Church principles. The movement formally began in July 1833 with a sermon by Oxford professor of poetry John Keble on national apostasy. Keble attacked threats to… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend
Published like Charles Dickens’s other works, first as a serial from May 1864 through November 1865, Our Mutual Friend reflects the author’s traditional multiple plots. It would be Dickens’s final completed work, and some critics see it as the culmination… Read More ›
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Analysis of Aphra Behn’S Oroonoko
Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave was the first English novel offering a sympathetic view of the suffering of slaves. While little is known of Behn’s younger life, she claimed to have lived in Surinam, the setting for her story. First… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Meredith’s One of Our Conquerors
In George Meredith’s One of Our Conquerors, the author employs his favored theme of marriages forced by society to the detriment of all involved, particularly females. His protagonist, 21-year-old Victor Radnor, is trapped in a pressured marriage to a rich… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist
Likely Charles Dickens’s best-known novel, Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy’s Progress, first appeared in serial form in Bentley’s Miscellany between February 1837 and April 1839. The author’s third novel, it would later become the most dramatized of any fictional… Read More ›
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Analysis of Sir Walter Scott’s Old Mortality
When Sir Walter Scott published the second in his Tales of My Landlord series in 1816, Old Mortality quickly became a favorite of his reading public. The novel focuses on the month of June 1679, with Scott compressing time to… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop
As one of Charles Dickens’s early works, The Old Curiosity Shop, first published in the periodical Master Humphrey’s Clock from April 1840 to February 1841, was a favorite among his contemporary readers. That favorable reception changed over time, as readers… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Gissing’s The Odd Women
As did most novels by George Gissing, The Odd Women focused on working-class poor in an uncaring society. The novel opens with six happy sisters, living with their widower physician father. He believes that women should not have to worry… Read More ›
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