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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
Robert Louis Stevenson found himself attracted to the subject matter of his novel The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter’s Tale due to his interest in the years following Jacobite Scotland’s 1745 rebellion. He also drew inspiration from Captain Marryat, commenting,… Read More ›
Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel of social injustice, Mary Barton, was banned in 1907 by the London County Council, which deemed the novel unfit for children aged 14 and under. That action supports the power of Gaskell’s prose to influence readers in… Read More ›
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her first novel, Mary: A Fiction, to express her most personal beliefs. An autobiographical work, Mary has been evaluated by later critics as too sentimental an expression to represent high-quality writing, and that inferiority in expression results… Read More ›
Charles Dickens first published his sixth novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, as a 10-part serial between January 1843 and July 1844. He later stated that he thought the lengthy tale of a young man’s emotional and ethical maturation the “best” of his… Read More ›
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