A study of man’s duality, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde vies with his Treasure Island (1883) for his most popular work. He wrote the piece while recovering from a hemorrhage, a nightmare having… Read More ›
Novel Analysis
Analysis of Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm
While Olive Schreiner was born and lived for years in South Africa, she remains important to the British writing tradition as the first colonial novelist held important by British readers. She brought a manuscript with her when, at age 26,… Read More ›
Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s The Small House at Allington
The fifth novel in Anthony Trollope’s Barsetshire sequence, The Small House at Allington introduced Lily Dale, the protagonist who would become his readers’ favorite. It is a sad tale, for which Trollope makes no excuse, although he acts more tenderly… Read More ›
Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite
First published as a serial in Macmillan’s Magazine between May and December 1870, Anthony Trollope’s Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite differs from much of his fiction. Rather than constructing a large number of “portraits” as he normally did, Trollope sought… Read More ›
Analysis of Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story
In Elizabeth Inchbald’s traditional story of forbidden love, a Catholic priest named Dorriforth loves his Protestant ward, Miss Milner, a character who in her youth had been indulged “to the extreme of folly.” Inchbald’s career as an actress informs the… Read More ›
Analysis of George Eliot’s Silas Marner
Generations of readers continue to enjoy the appealing story of an old miser who regains his humanity through the love of a lost child in George Eliot’s Silas Marner. In typical Eliot fashion, the novel reveals the tensions in a… Read More ›
Analysis of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published the second Sherlock Holmes novel, The Sign of Four, to little fanfare. A Study in Scarlet, Doyle’s first novel to feature the superdetective and his friend and chronicler, Dr. Watson, appeared in 1887. However, the… Read More ›
Analysis of Suffragist Beatrice Harraden’s Ships That Pass in the Night
Suffragist Beatrice Harraden had written short stories and one novel before publishing Ships That Pass in the Night, but that work brought her fame as a writer. An example of sentimental fiction, it depicts the doomed love of two patients… Read More ›
Analysis of Henry Rider Haggard’s She: A History of Adventure
Like Henry Rider Haggard’s other romance novels set in Africa, including King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and Allan Quatermain (1887), She: A History of Adventure is based in part on Haggard’s experience in that country. As assistant to Sir Henry Bulwer,… Read More ›
Analysis of Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey
Published only a few weeks before Laurence Sterne’s death, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick featured a parson character made famous in Sterne’s first novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, the title later shortened… Read More ›
Analysis of Mary Brunton’s Self Control
Had her short life not ended tragically by death in childbirth, Mary Brunton might have greatly expanded her volume of work, which influenced writers as important as Jane Austen. Austen praised Brunton’s first novel, Self Control, wondering in print whether… Read More ›
Analysis of Mary Delarivière Manley’s The Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zarazians
The Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zarazians proved to be Mary Delarivière Manley’s first success, following the unimpressive productions of two of her dramas. Her story proved popular enough to follow with a sequel, also in 1705. A… Read More ›
Analysis of George Meredith’s Sandra Belloni
George Meredith first published his third novel, Sandra Belloni, under the title Emilia in England. The title character is a singer, discovered while singing in the woods by the three Pole daughters—Arabella, Cornelia, Adela—and their brother Wilfrid, an army officer… Read More ›
Analysis of Jane Austen’s Sanditon
Begun in 1817, when Jane Austen had become ill with what researchers believe to be Addison’s disease, Sanditon remains incomplete. It promised to resemble Austen’s previous novels in its focus on the relationships of the fashionable. However, it also promised… Read More ›
Analysis of Sir Walter Scott’s St. Ronan’s Well
While not considered a major novel, St. Ronan’s Well remains important in demonstrating a change of topic for its author, Sir Walter Scott. Scott, who basically invented historical fiction, varies from his traditional approach to employ as setting a fashionable… Read More ›
Analysis of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth
Elizabeth Gaskell’s second novel, Ruth, focused, as had her first, Mary Barton (1848), on a young working-class woman. However, in Ruth she makes a heroine of an unlikely figure in a seamstress who bears an illegitimate child. While other novels… Read More ›
Analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Roxana
Daniel Defoe claims in his preface to the novel fully titled The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, Afterwards Call’d the Countess de Wintselshiem, in Germany. Being the Person… Read More ›
Analysis of William Harrison Ainsworth’s Rookwood
When William Harrison Ainsworth wrote Rookwood, he was struggling against a recent bankruptcy of the business he shared with his father-in-law. Returning to the practice of law in 1830 and anticipating the birth of his third daughter, according to biographer… Read More ›
Analysis of Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random
Tobias Smollett’s first novel reflected both the reading interests of the day and Smollett’s own attitude toward fiction. As a picaresque with first-person narration, the novel offered readers an action-centered story with a rogue main character, but Roderick Random could… Read More ›
Analysis of Henry James’s Roderick Hudson
Roderick Hudson was Henry James’s first extensive novel, appearing as installments in 1875 in The Atlantic Monthly. James chose as protagonist an amateur American sculptor, placing him in Europe with a wealthy patron named Rowland Mallet. Critics agreed that this… Read More ›
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