The first volume of a trilogy collectively entitled His Dark Materials, this fantasy novel introduces Lyra Belacqua, a girl on the threshold of adolescence. Lyra lives in Oxford under the careless supervision of scholars associated with Lord Asriel. Readers familiar… Read More ›
Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1989, this novel combines aspects of romance fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy to freshen the telling of a double set of complex relationships. Reminiscent of The French Lieutenant’s Woman by… Read More ›
The seven volumes of this series include (in the order finally preferred by the author) The Magician’s Nephew (1955), The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), The Horse and His Boy (1954), Prince Caspian (1951), The Voyage of the… 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 ›
G. A. Henty’s works today remain useful as examples of 19th-century children’s literature for boys of a chauvinistic bent. Overbearingly patriotic, the novels prove bombastic to modern readers. However, in Henty’s day, novels such as Under Drake’s Flag captured the… Read More ›
First published as a serial in the magazine Young Folks between October 1881 and January 1882, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island would be labeled a masterpiece of storytelling by notables including author Henry James. Stevenson began the story in 1881… Read More ›
Lewis Carroll wrote the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and continued to alter forever children’s literature by omitting any moralizing from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, just as he had in the original Alice book…. Read More ›
Likely Charles Dickens’s best-known novel, Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy’s Progress, first appeared in serial form in Bentley’s Miscellany between February 1837 and April 1839. The author’s third novel, it would later become the most dramatized of any fictional… Read More ›
As one of Charles Dickens’s early works, The Old Curiosity Shop, first published in the periodical Master Humphrey’s Clock from April 1840 to February 1841, was a favorite among his contemporary readers. That favorable reception changed over time, as readers… Read More ›
In the third novel by Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, readers for the first time glimpsed what would become the traditional Dickens novel, uniting several of the author’s private social concerns as themes and offering myriad characters representative of the cultural… Read More ›
In one of history’s best-beloved novels for children, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Frances Hodgson Burnett emphasizes the importance of love over material wealth. Before the birth of the little lord, Cedric Errol, his aristocratic father, Captain Cedric, marries beneath himself, angering… Read More ›
First published as a 20-part serial between December 1855 and June 1857, Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit served to expose several social abuses of interest to its author, including rampant financial corruption and an incompetent civil service, where members were appointed… Read More ›
Charles Dickens’s seventh novel, first published in 20 serial parts between October 1846 and April 1848 with the complete title Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, Retail, Wholesale, and for Exploration, marked what many critics agree to be… Read More ›
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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