Author Archives
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Analysis of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford
One of Elizabeth Gaskell’s best-known novels, Cranford, focuses on an English community of mature women, to which men seldom gain admittance. It first appeared in series form (1851–53) in Charles Dickens’s periodical Household Words and was meant only as a… Read More ›
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The Cornhill Magazine
In 1860, founder and publisher George Smith hired William Makepeace Thackeray as the first editor to write and critique material for The Cornhill Magazine. Eight other men worked as editors until the last issue appeared in 1900. Thackeray devoted issues… Read More ›
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Analysis of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race
In Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1871 novel, The Coming Race, later classified as science fiction, the author writes a futuristic novel that complemented his historical fiction. In this plot, often considered a satire on Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory, an American mining engineer… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Reade’s The Cloister and the Hearth
Charles Reade’s popular historical romance, The Cloister and the Hearth: A Tale of the Middle Ages, represented the labor of two years. Reade was hired in 1859 by the publishers of Once a Week to help that periodical compete with… Read More ›
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Analysis of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa
Samuel Richardson published his second novel in seven volumes, the first two in 1747, and the remaining five the next year. Like his first work, Pamela (1740), Clarissa is an epistolary novel, made up of letters written between characters. While… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Reade’s Christie Johnstone
While not considered among Charles Reade’s major works, Christie Johnstone provides a delightful insight into his sense of humor. Not only does the novel’s subject matter entertain, but its format also proves of interest, as Reade designed some chapters as… Read More ›
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Chivalry
The word chivalry derives from the French term cheval, or horse, and those practicing chivalry in medieval times possessed highly developed horseback-riding skills. Dressed in armor during times of battle and known as knights, from a term that originally meant… Read More ›
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Chartist Movement/Chartism
The Chartist movement, or Chartism, refers to an English social-reform movement from 1838 to 1848, based on the belief that Parliamentary legislation could correct economic and social exploitation. In 1837, the London Working Men’s Association submitted a program titled the… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Hale White’s Catherine Furz
William Hale White first fictionalized his attempts to escape his childhood’s Calvinistic training by writing an autobiography under the name of Mark Rutherford. He later used his own name when he published another serious exploration of the conflict caused by… Read More ›
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Analysis of Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent
Maria Edgeworth broke new narrative ground with her 1800 novel, Castle Rackrent. While her methodology of developing an imaginary hero who writes a memoir “edited” by an author had been popular since Robinson Crusoe (1719), she developed a new approach… Read More ›
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Analysis of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto proved crucial to the development of Gothic fiction. As indicated by the book’s subtitle, Walpole (1717–97) designed it to provide readers with a romance incorporating a dark, moody villain, an endangered heroine, a hero… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her?
Serialized between January 1864 and August 1865, Anthony Trollope’s first in his Palliser series, Can You Forgive Her? proved instantly popular. Based on reworked material from his failed comedy The Noble Jilt, its plot focuses on Victorian discontent with social… Read More ›
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Analysis of Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor
Sir Walter Scott based his novel The Bride of Lammermoor, second in his Tales of My Landlord series, on a true tragic love story about a Scottish family named Dalrymple, supported by fictional accounts, poetry, and popular ballad versions. He… Read More ›
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Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
Founded and published by William Blackwood, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine appeared monthly between April 1817 and December 1905. Edited in the beginning by James Pringle and Thomas Cleghorn, it was titled Blackwood’s Edinburgh Monthly for its first six issues. Blackwood assumed… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty
Just as writers before her sought to expose abuses against the working class, Anna Sewell, in her enduring children’s novel Black Beauty, exposed abuses against animals. Although ostensibly written for children ages nine through twelve, adults also loved the book…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Richard Jefferies’s Bevis
Like most fiction written for boys in the late 19th century, Richard Jefferies’s Bevis, the Story of a Boy is an adventure novel. Its main characters enjoy their own quest, as its plot mimics that of adult adventure novels in… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Meredith’s Beauchamp’s Career
George Meredith’s 1876 novel, Beauchamp’s Career, appeared serially in The Fortnightly Review between August 1874 and December 1875, becoming notable for its keen insight into the politics of England at the century’s end. It features the life of a politician,… Read More ›
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Analysis of William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Luck of Barry Lyndon
William Makepeace Thackeray’s first novel, The Luck of Barry Lyndon: A Romance of the Last Century by Fitz-Boodle [The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.], appeared in Fraser’s Magazine as a monthly serial in 1844. It was later revised and released… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers
Barchester Towers was Anthony Trollope’s second in a group of novels, following The Warden (1855), later called the Barsetshire sequence. Published in 1857, it featured Trollope’s trademark interest in religion as politics. In his focus on who would receive the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh
Called by critics a confessional “novel in verse,” Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh represented a sustained cry for human intellectual and creative freedom, more specifically, for women’s independence. A Künstlerroman, or story of the maturation of a young writer, the… Read More ›
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