“The Story of the Eldest Princess” is one of the five stories that appeared in A. S. Byatt’s collection The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (1994). It is an ostensible fairy tale that in fact subverts the assumptions of the… Read More ›
British Literature
Analysis of Doris Lessing’s The Story of a Non-marrying Man
Published in 1973 in The Sun between Their Feet, the second volume of Doris Lessing’s Collected African Stories, “The Story of a Non-marrying Man” is paradoxically titled since it concerns a man who has in fact married bigamously many times…. Read More ›
Analysis of Wilkie Collins’s The Lawyer’s Story of a Stolen Letter
“The Stolen Letter” was originally published as “The Fourth Poor Traveller” in The Seven Poor Travellers, the extra Christmas number of Charles Dickens’s Household Words (December 1854). At this time, Wilkie Collins was a protégé of Dickens. The story was… Read More ›
Analysis of Bram Stoker’s The Squaw
An unseasonable short story that Bram Stoker wrote in 1893 for Holly Leaves (the Christmas number of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News), “The Squaw” is set in Nuremberg, a city that Stoker had visited in 1885. A self-regarding, unnamed… Read More ›
Analysis of Nick Hornby’s Speaking with the Angel
Speaking with the Angel is the result of editor Nick Hornby’s request to a group of writer friends to help in a charity with which he was personally involved. Hornby is the father of an autistic boy, and part of… Read More ›
Analysis of Angela Carter’s A Souvenir of Japan
One of the short stories from Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces, “A Souvenir of Japan” reflects the influence of Angela Carter‘s residence in Japan (1970–72) on her writing. Written soon after her divorce from her first husband, this short story set… Read More ›
Analysis of Ian McEwan’s Solid Geometry
Ian McEwan departs somewhat from his typical style and subject matter in the story “Solid Geometry,” published in his first collection of stories, First Love, Last Rites. As in the rest of the stories in the collection, the main character… Read More ›
Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by “Boz”
Sketches by “Boz” Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People is a collection of Charles Dickens’s first-published works. He had begun his literary publishing career proper on December 1, 1833 (at age 21), when “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” (later… Read More ›
Analysis of Henry James’s Sir Edmund Orme
“Sir Edmund Orme” is one of Henry James’s many tales that revolve around strange apparitions. A fascination with occult (magical, theosophical, mysterious, or even spiritual) phenomena is evident in many of James’s tales and short stories. Like his contemporaries George… Read More ›
Analysis of Charles Dickens’s The Signalman
A much-anthologized story that first appeared in Mugby Junction, the extra Christmas number for Charles Dickens’s magazine All the Year Round in 1866. It later appeared in a one-volume edition of all the Christmas numbers from All the Year Round… Read More ›
Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s The Shadow-Line
This late novella, originally written in 1915, reworks themes from Joseph Conrad’s earlier writing, while also acting as an ambiguous response to World War I. (Conrad’s son, Borys, enlisted and became a second lieutenant while Conrad worked on the text.)… Read More ›
Analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant
This fairy tale by Oscar Wilde was published in 1888 in a volume called The Happy Prince and Other Tales. After being away on a trip, a giant returns to his home only to find that children are playing in… Read More ›
Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer
In late 1909, Joseph Conrad broke off working on his political novel about Russia, Under Western Eyes, to write the short story “The Secret-Sharer: An Episode from the Sea.” First issued in two parts in 1910, in the August and… Read More ›
Analysis of G. K. Chesterton’s The Secret Garden
A detective story first published in the monthly magazine The Storyteller in October 1910, and subsequently in the collection The Innocence of Father Brown (1911). Father Brown attends a dinner party held by the chief of the Paris police, Aristide… Read More ›
Analysis of Saki’s The Schartz-Metterklume Method
“The Schartz-Metterklume Method” is one of Edwardian writer Saki’s mordantly humorous stories of rebellion against rigid, stodgy adulthood, but this time the attack is launched by another adult rather than a child. The story, which first appeared in the Westminster… Read More ›
Analysis of Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia
Coming after two novellas featuring Sherlock Holmes (A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four), “A Scandal in Bohemia,” a short detective story, first appeared in the Strand magazine in July 1891. It recounts the case of the king… Read More ›
Analysis of George Eliot’s The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton
Encouraged by George Henry Lewes, Mary Ann (Marian) Evans purposed to write publishable fiction and began with a title that came to her in the middle of one night, “The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton.” She conceived a… Read More ›
Analysis of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Round the Sofa
Round the Sofa, a two-volume collection of stories, short novels, and essays by Elizabeth Gaskell, was made up of earlier works published previously in magazines, notably Charles Dickens’s Household Words and, in America, in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. The disparate… Read More ›
Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid
In this much-anthologized story, Thomas Hardy combines realism and imagination to create a romance that illustrates the danger of allowing sexual desire to influence one’s marriage choice. Set in the village of Silverthorn in Hardy’s Lower Wessex, “The Romantic Adventures… Read More ›
Analysis of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner
David Ellis, in his account of D. H. Lawrence’s late years, explains that the author was paid 15 pounds for allowing the publication of “The Rocking-Horse Winner” in Cynthia Asquith’s 1926 anthology, The Ghost Book. This, states Ellis, was a… Read More ›
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