Author Archives
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Analysis of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Letter
For six months in 1921 and four months in 1925, W. Somerset Maugham traveled throughout the British-ruled Malay States, befriending the civil servants, planters, officials, and hostesses of the Malaysian colonies—and gathering abundant material for his fiction. “The Letter,” one… Read More ›
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Analysis of Martin Amis’s Let Me Count the Times
Masculinity in crisis has been a recurrent topic in Martin Amis’s fiction. The character John Self, that notorious example of unredeemed machismo in Money (1984) immediately comes to mind, but other characters, like Guy Clinch (London Fields, 1989), a prototype… Read More ›
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Analysis of Graham Swift’s Learning to Swim
The title story in the collection Learning to Swim and Other Stories (1982) was originally published in 1978 and is one of Graham Swift’s bestknown tales. It is representative of this author’s short fiction: The plot focuses on domestic strife,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s The Lagoon
“The Lagoon” was one of the first short stories that Joseph Conrad wrote and was his second to be published. The story is set in the Malay Archipelago, which also features in the novels Almayer’s Folly (1895) and An Outcast… Read More ›
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Analysis of Angela Carter’s The Lady of the House of Love
“The Lady of the House of Love,” a short story, was first published in Angela Carter’s 1979 collection The Bloody Chamber. Although The Bloody Chamber is composed mainly of retellings of fairy tales, “The Lady of the House” is a… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Egerton’s Keynotes and Discords
John Lane published George Egerton’s (Mary Chavelita Dunne’s) Keynotes in 1893 and Discords a year later, heading up what would become his new series, “Keynotes,” and bringing Egerton fame and notoriety. Aubrey Beardsley’s illustration for Egerton’s Keynotes collection typified the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Virginia Woolf’s Kew Gardens
“Kew Gardens” was first published as a stand-alone work on May 12, 1919, by Hogarth Press in an initial run of 150 copies. This was quickly followed in June of the same year by a second edition of 500 copies…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s Karain: A Memory
One of Joseph Conrad’s early Malay stories, “Karain: A Memory” was first published in the November issue of Blackwood’s Magazine in 1897 and subsequently appeared in Tales of Unrest (1898). A story of betrayal and exile and a twofold frame… Read More ›
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Analysis of Katherine Mansfield’s Je ne parle pas français
A pivotal story in Katherine Mansfield’s career, “Je ne parle pas français” is also a key modernist short story. The piece was composed over two weeks in the last year of World War I, at the time when Mansfield was… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Eliot’s Janet’s Repentance
“Janet’s Repentance” is part of a trio of stories by George Eliot that was first serialized as Scenes of Clerical Life in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. The other two stories in the group are “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos… Read More ›
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Analysis of Graham Greene’s The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen
“The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen” first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in November 1965. The piece was later published in the volume of short stories May We Borrow Your Husband? in March 1967. The volume is subtitled “And Other Comedies… Read More ›
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Analysis of Hanif Kureishi’s Intimacy
Intimacy is the most unapologetic and autobiographical work to date from Hanif Kureishi (b. 1954) and was published in 1998 to a roar of controversy. Critics were appalled by what they saw as the novella’s barely veiled depiction of Kureishi’s… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ben Okri’s In the Shadow of War
First published in the West Africa magazine in 1983, “In the Shadow of War” was later included as the first story in the collection Stars of the New Curfew (1988). Based largely on Ben Okri’s experience of the Nigerian civil… Read More ›
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Analysis of Fay Weldon’s In the Great War
Fay Weldon’s early collection Polaris and Other Stories both reflects and anticipates the concerns that engage her writing in its myriad permutations, before and since. By the time the collection was published, Weldon was a familiar female voice, in no… Read More ›
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Analysis of Henry James’s In the Cage
“In the Cage,” a realist novella, was first published during what is known as Henry James’s ‘middle period.’ In this phase of his writing, James focused on political and social themes rather than on his more typical explorations of the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Saki’s The Interlopers
A story that illustrates Saki’s (H. H. Munro’s) lesser-known talent for pathos, “The Interlopers,” collected in the posthumous anthology The Toys of Peace (1919), is a sort of Balkan gothic romance that moves from thrilling to hopeful to tragic, thanks… Read More ›
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Analysis of Rebecca West’s Indissoluble Matrimony
Rebecca West (1892–1983) was born Cicely Isabel Fairchild. Following a brief period on the London stage, West took her nom de plume from the outspoken heroine of Henrick Ibsen’s Rosmershalm when she began her writing career with the suffragette magazine… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress
First published in the New Quarterly Magazine in July 1878, “An Indiscretion” was never collected by Thomas Hardy into any of the four volumes of short stories that he produced during his lifetime. Its eventual printing in 1934 caused a… Read More ›
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Analysis of Angela Carter’s Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene
“Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene” first appeared in FMR Magazine in February 1992. It was subsequently published in American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, the short story collection that appeared the year after Angela Carter’s death in 1992, and again in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Martin Amis’s The Immortals
This story by Martin Amis appeared in the 1987 collection Einstein’s Monsters, comprising five short stories and an introductory essay, “Thinkability,” relating the author’s observations about the nuclear threat’s chilling effects on intellectual and spiritual life. Amis later referred to… Read More ›
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