Geraldine Jewsbury’s first novel, Zoe: The History of Two Lives, was one of the first Victorian novels to interrogate religious skepticism. Jewsbury could not rush through such an important topic, as she explained to her lifelong friend and correspondent Jane… Read More ›
Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote a fantasy/science fiction piece in his novel Zanoni. The novel’s protagonist, labeled by those familiar with him in Italy “the rich Zanoni . . . his wealth is incalculable!,” possesses special powers of the occult that give… Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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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