A Robin Hood figure, the factual individual named Rob Roy, formed the basis for Sir Walter Scott’s historical fiction Rob Roy. The real Rob Roy (literally “Red Robert,” for his red hair) was a drover who became an outlaw, leading… Read More ›
Novel Analysis
Analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
Arguably the first English novel, Daniel Defoe’s prose romance Robinson Crusoe recounts the fictional adventures of the title character, an ambitious Englishman, through Crusoe’s first-person autobiographical narrative. In the formally titled The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,… Read More ›
Analysis of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Rienzi: The Last of the Tribunes
An author with an avid interest in history, especially that of Italy, Edward Bulwer-Lytton focused his historical fiction, Rienzi: The Last of the Tribunes, on a real-life figure named Cola di Rienzo. He proves an idealist who brings peace to… Read More ›
Analysis of George Meredith’s Rhoda Fleming
George Meredith’s fourth novel, Rhoda Fleming, dealt with a familiar theme: the pressure society places on both genders—but especially women—to conform to unrealistic expectations. That his culture governed love relationships with laws, such as those relating to marriage and divorce,… Read More ›
Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native moves at a slow pace that drives some readers to distraction. His narrative pace mirrors that of country life, very much a topic in his novel, featured in his setting of Egdon Heath…. Read More ›
Analysis of Sir Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet
Sir Walter Scott has long been acknowledged as the first writer of historical fiction, and when he chose Scotland as a setting, he generally produced his best work. He introduced this approach in his first novel, Waverley (1814), when he… Read More ›
Analysis of Eliza Lynn Linton’s The Rebel of the Family
First serialized in Temple Bar in 1880, Eliza Lynn Linton’s The Rebel of the Family has enjoyed renewed interest in the 21st century due to the efforts of feminist critics who have focused on the novel’s several controversial issues. While… Read More ›
Analysis of Samuel Johnson’s History of Rasselas
Most critics note that Samuel Johnson’s History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia is as much essay, parable, and cautionary tale as novel. Johnson sought to counter the popular optimistic philosophy supported by the French Rousseau and German Leibnitz, which held… Read More ›
The Quest in Literature
The quest story has existed for centuries, with Homer’s The Odyssey serving as the prototypical example. Also known as the hero’s journey, plot aspects of the quest often appear in the modern English-language romance novel and may be identified in… Read More ›
Analysis of Sir Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward
Sir Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward was one of three novels Scott issued in 1823. The first edition was printed in 10,000 copies, the sheets carried in bales by steamship to London on May 16, 1823, where binders worked the night… Read More ›
Analysis of John Galt’s The Provost
John Galt had written four Scottish regional stories for William Blackwood’s Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine before he published his fifth, The Provost, in that journal. The series boosted Galt’s reputation beyond that of a writer of biographies, articles, travel books, and… Read More ›
Analysis of Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor
Although written in 1846, Charlotte Brontë’s first novel, The Professor, would not be published until after her 1855 death. Clearly autobiographical, it served as a model for her later, more fully developed version of her experiences in Brussels as a… Read More ›
Analysis of James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, long acknowledged as the best of the many works by James Hogg (1770–1835), focuses on the religious and political conflict in Scotland at the end of the 18th century. The first portion,… Read More ›
Analysis of Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda
Of Anthony Hope’s many short stories and various novels, The Prisoner of Zenda remains his best known and enjoyed, praised by contemporaries such as Robert Louis Stevenson, followed by its less successful sequel, Rupert of Hentzau (1898). The novel offers… Read More ›
Analysis of Henry James’s The Princess Casamassima
Henry James first published The Princess Casamassima as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly between September 1885 and October 1886. He reintroduces the princess as a character from a previous novel, Roderick Hudson (1875), in which the sculptor Hudson dies in… Read More ›
Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s The Prime Minister
The Prime Minister took its place as Anthony Trollope’s fifth book in the Palliser sequence. It first appeared as a serial between November 1875 and June 1876, before its issue in four volumes. While many of Trollope’s contemporaries, including Henry… Read More ›
Analysis of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady appeared first as installments in The Atlantic Monthly (1880–81), where readers recognized in its protagonist, Isabel Archer, a more mature version of the title character from his earlier novella, Daisy Miller (1879). Like… Read More ›
Analysis of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress
The son of a village tinker with little schooling, John Bunyan experienced a tremendous religious conflict that led him to write a book in two parts that would become one of the most popular of all time, translated into dozens… Read More ›
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde’s version of the Faust temptation tale, The Picture of Dorian Gray, proved so popular that it was later converted to drama and opera and imitated by other writers in subsequent novels. It first appeared in 1890 in Lippincott’s… Read More ›
Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux
Anthony Trollope published the fourth entry in his Palliser series, Phineas Redux, first as a serial in The Graphic between July 1873 and January 1874. It appeared seven years after its predecessor, Phineas Finn, which introduced the adventurous protagonist named… Read More ›
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