Thomas Hardy at last attracted public notice as a novelist with his tale of pastoral simplicity, Under the Greenwood Tree, or the Mellstock Quire. It was his third novel. He had destroyed the first and written a second, Desperate Memories… 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 appearing as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly between May and December of 1882, Thomas Hardy’s Two on a Tower has been considered an extreme example of Hardy’s employing enormous settings, in this case the universe, to minimalize the… Read More ›
One of Henry James’s shortest novels, The Turn of the Screw first appeared in Collier’s Weekly. When published in a volume titled The Two Magics, it appeared with another story titled Covering End. Although brief, it captured readers’ imagination and… Read More ›
Judged the most romantic book written by Thomas Hardy, The Trumpet-Major ran first as a serial in the publication Good Words from January to December in 1880. While the character referred to by the title does not find romance, several… Read More ›
Although works by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch faded from the public’s favor soon after his death in 1944, they had been extremely popular in the author’s day. When his publishers Messrs J. M. Dent chose to mark the centenary of “Q,”… Read More ›
Dr. Samuel Johnson once claimed that “nothing odd can last.” As an example, he cited Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, which had temporarily fallen from favor. Over two centuries later, that same novel may well… 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 ›
One of fiction’s more irreverent and likable characters, the title character of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones has entertained readers and viewers of the multiple dramatic forms he later assumed for centuries. What has become familiar to 21st-century readers proved an… Read More ›
In Tom Brown’s School Days, Thomas Hughes established a long-lasting model for stories about the education of the young. The novel is highly autobiographical, demonstrating how much Hughes enjoyed and benefited from his years attending Rugby, made famous by the… Read More ›
H. G. Wells had written the basis for his brief novel The Time Machine in a series of stories published in The Science Schools Journal in 1888. Labeled a dystopia by some critics, the story acts as a warning to… 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 ›
By the time Anthony Trollope published his autobiographical The Three Clerks, he had established himself as a novelist who resisted the didactic fiction on which his mother, Frances Trollope, had made her name. He did not shy away from tales… Read More ›
Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles, originally subtitled A Pure Woman, is about Tess d’Urberville’s tragic dilemma between her seducer, Alec, and her named husband, Angel, both of whom intrude into her life. In epic form, Hardy describes Tess’s… Read More ›
As Anne Brontë worked on her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, she had in mind the terrible ravages alcohol had inflicted on her brother, Branwell. When her sister Charlotte took exception to her portrayal due to its uncomfortable… Read More ›
With Coningsby, or the New Generation (1844), and Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845), Benjamin Disraeli’s Tancred, or the New Crusade made up his most successful and famous trilogy of works. All deal with individuals caught in the conflict of… Read More ›
Sir Walter Scott introduces The Talisman, second in his group of books comprising his Tales of the Crusade, explaining how he selected the topic for his novel. The Talisman, as indicated by the title, focuses on a charm or amulet… Read More ›
Among the great Charles Dickens’s final novels, A Tale of Two Cities well represents his maturity as a novelist. Like his previous works, this novel investigates man’s capacity for inhumanity. However, its emphasis on the cause for the abuses men… Read More ›
The two nations to which Benjamin Disraeli referred in his Sybil, or the Two Nations did not relate to governments. It referred rather to the wealthy class and the working class, the rich and the poor. His interest in the… Read More ›
Almost since its inception, fiction has focused on social problems, including the rights of women. By its nature, art reflects its era, and much fiction proved to be political, supporting the rights of women and other marginalized groups, either overtly… Read More ›
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