SYNOPSIS Volume 1 Emma is the story of the wealthy, beautiful, spoiled only daughter of an aging widowed hypochondriac, Mr. Woodhouse. Nearly 21, she runs their large house, Hartfield, in Highbury, Surrey. The novel opens with the marriage of her… Read More ›
SYNOPSIS Volume 1 Old Mr. Dashwood of Norland Park in Sussex and his heir, his nephew Henry Dashwood, have died. Henry married twice. By his first marriage, he has a son, John. John and his four-year-old son, Henry, are in… Read More ›
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” [3]. So begins Jane Austen’s arguably most enduringly successful novel—one that has been translated into at least… Read More ›
The origin of The Hobbit (1937) is well known. One day in the late 1920s, Tolkien was grading essays when he came across a blank page and absently wrote the sentence “In a hole in the ground there lived a… Read More ›
Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Aragorn (Strider, Elessar) Aragorn is the… Read More ›
Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Synopsis for The Return of the King Book 5: The War of the Ring Chapters 1–3: The Brink… Read More ›
Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Synopsis The Two Towers Book 3: The Treason of Isengard Chapters 1–2: Pursuit to Rohan In a chapter entitled “The Departure of Boromir,” book 3 begins where book… Read More ›
The Lord of the Rings is the crowning achievement of Tolkien’s literary career, and the one narrative by which he is chiefly remembered and admired. In the more than 50 years since the trilogy’s initial publication, it has been republished… Read More ›
Nineteen Eighty-Four is Orwell’s final and most famous full-length work of fiction, published in 1949. In Animal Farm, Orwell had realized his goal of making political writing an art. (Although later generations would judge that he had already achieved that… Read More ›
Satiric fable, published in 1945, generally considered to be Orwell’s finest work of fiction. Animal Farm transformed Orwell from a respected English journalist and minor novelist into an international best-selling author. It had appeared in 18 foreign translations prior to… Read More ›
Dickens’s 10th novel, serialized weekly in Household Words (April 1–August 12, 1854), unillustrated. Published in one volume by Bradbury & Evans, 1854. This controversial book, the shortest of Dickens’s novels, takes up the issues of industrialism and education and offers… Read More ›
Dickens’s 13th novel, published in 36 weekly parts in All the Year Round (December 1, 1860–August 3, 1861), unillustrated. Published in three volumes by Chapman & Hall, 1861. A Bildungsroman narrated in the first person by its hero, Great Expectations… Read More ›
Tar Baby (1981), Morrison’s fourth novel, changes location from the geographical boundaries of the United States to the larger context of the Caribbean and Europe. In part, the novel is the story of two families, the Streets and the Childs,… Read More ›
Sula (1974) is Toni Morrison’s second published novel. Like The Bluest Eye, the novel is a story of two girls coming of age. As children, the two girls in question, Sula Peace and Nel Wright, function as two halves of… Read More ›
Like Morrison’s first two novels, The Bluest Eye and Sula, Song of Solomon (1977) is a coming of age story. Unlike her first two novels, Song of Solomon centrally is the saga of a young man. In fact, Song of… Read More ›
The Bluest Eye (1970) is Toni Morrison’s first published novel. The novel takes place in the 1940s in the industrial northeast of Lorian, Ohio, and tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young African-American woman who is marginalized by her… Read More ›
This is the title of the novel begun by Joyce on his 22nd birthday, February 2, 1904, shortly after the editors of Dana had rejected his essay “A Portrait of the Artist” because they deemed its contents unsuitable for their… Read More ›
This is the title that Joyce gave to his first published novel, derived, as noted below, from the shorter version given to an earlier prose piece. Joyce composed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man over the course… Read More ›
This is the title that Joyce gave to his collection of 15 short stories written over a three-year period (1904–07). Though he finished the final story, “The Dead,” in spring of 1907, difficulties in finding a publisher and Joyce’s initial… Read More ›
Sketching the lives of a host of bizarre characters, Bailey’s Cafe (1992) focuses on issues of marginality. Each of the characters, while visiting the title setting, is in transition, having barely escaped lives of not-so-quiet desperation in hopes of regaining… Read More ›