Author Archives
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Analysis of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen had begun writing her final book, Northanger Abbey, in 1798. It was accepted by a publisher in 1803 but would not be published until 1818, one year following her death. The book was a satire on the wildly… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey
In his third and most popular novel, Nightmare Abbey, Thomas Love Peacock supplied a parody of contemporary literature and authors that greatly resembled in format his previous satires, Headlong Hall (1816) and Melincourt (1817). All three contain little by way… Read More ›
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Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of the Narcissus
In what critics label Joseph Conrad’s first accomplished work, he produces a text at once revered and criticized. Conrad asked W. E. Henley, poet and editor of The New Review, to publish the novel in his magazine. Conrad hoped that… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby
In the third novel by Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, readers for the first time glimpsed what would become the traditional Dickens novel, uniting several of the author’s private social concerns as themes and offering myriad characters representative of the cultural… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Gissing’s New Grub Street
George Gissing’s tendency to see life as catastrophe is apparent in his most popular and critically acclaimed novel, New Grub Street. Gissing’s personal experience, marked by brief imprisonment, two disastrous marriages, and a lifelong struggle to embody the ideals he… Read More ›
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Newgate Fiction
The label “Newgate fiction” applied to novels mainly of the 1830s depicting low-life characters and settings distinguished by a focus on crime. The authors Edward Bulwer-Lytton and William Harrison Ainsworth wrote the majority of Newgate fiction. The name for the… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Newcomes
William Makepeace Thackeray issued in 24 installments what would become his most popular novel, first published between October 1853 and August 1855. In The Newcomes, Thackeray offered an uncomplimentary view of Victorian ideas of respectable marriages; hence, the meaningful subtitle… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho
In her fourth novel, Ann Radcliffe explores the machinery of the Gothic novel but reveals the mysteries referenced in her most popular work’s title. Its popularity validated her publisher’s interest in the work, which had gained unprecedented support by the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Catherine Grace Gore’s Mrs. Armytage
Despite criticism of Catherine Grace Gore’s work by notables such as William Makepeace Thackeray, it proved highly popular in its day and included some novels deemed superior to others. One of her best works, Mrs. Armytage, or, Female Domination, excels… Read More ›
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Analysis of Frederick Marryat’s Mr. Midshipman Easy
Captain Frederick Marryat’s Mr. Midshipman Easy proved extremely popular. Informed by Marryat’s own naval experience, all his work allowed a gifted writer the opportunity to shape realistic adventure tales in which he expressed himself in a vigorous style undergirded by… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ouida’s Moths
Ouida (1839 – 1908) practices her typical effusive style in the 1880 novel Moths, so named for one character’s pronouncement that the “fashionable,” or high society, world damages a woman. Moths, half of which immolate themselves “in feverish frailty,” and… Read More ›
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Analysis of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins is best known for his works The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone, both of which reflected aspects of Collins’s own experience. By the time The Moonstone appeared serially between January and August 1868 in the periodical… Read More ›
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Analysis of M. G. Lewis’s The Monk
Following Anne Radcliffe in creating fiction of the Gothic genre, M. G. Lewis published his sensation fiction, The Monk, for a public eager to indulge in entertainment highly dependent on horror elements. Unlike Radcliffe’s more sophisticated The Mysteries of Udolpho… Read More ›
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Analysis of Sir Walter Scott’s The Monastery
Sir Walter Scott introduced the modern novel to the Western world with his publication of Waverley (1814) and invented the subgenre of historical fiction known as the historical novel, which, in the words of David Daiches, would “show history and… Read More ›
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Analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders
While Daniel Defoe’s most loved book is still Robinson Crusoe (1719) due to its appeal to young readers, Moll Flanders is considered by critics his most artful. Although it features the same hyperbole used in Robinson Crusoe, with Moll taking… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Love Peacock’s The Misfortunes of Elphin
Thomas Love Peacock Published his The Misfortunes of Elphin in an attempt to satirize what he viewed as affectations employed by his contemporary fiction writers, also taking aim at his traditional targets, including theories regarding universal education, the removal from… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss
The most tragic novel by George Eliot, this story is also her most autobiographical. It was published after her highly successful first novel, Adam Bede (1859), and it proved to be another great success, helping to establish Eliot’s reputation as… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Eliot’s Middlemarch
Often identified as the greatest English novel ever written, Middlemarch by George Eliot examines the lives of several members of the rising middle class in the early to middle 19th century in a midsized town in the Midlands of England…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Love Peacock’s Melincourt
Thomas Love Peacock wrote his second novel, Melincourt or Sir Oran Hautton, with the goal of lambasting various political and literary figures. The book proved more ambitious, particularly in its length, than its predecessor, Headlong Hall (1816). Some critics found its… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy first published The Life and Death of the Mayor of Casterbridge: A Man of Character in serial parts; it appeared in The Graphic between January and May 1886, to be published in book form later that year. It… Read More ›
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