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 ›
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 ›
Anthony Trollope continued throughout his career to focus his novels on everyday life. As the trend of sensation fiction faded in the late 1860s, Trollope began a new trend of his own, adding the theme of politics to his writing…. Read More ›
Jane Austen composed Persuasion, her final completed novel, between 1815 and 1816; it would be published posthumously in 1818. Unwell and forced to return to Bath, a location she had celebrated in her younger years, Austen produced a story with… Read More ›
In his first novel, Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman, Edward Bulwer-Lytton shaped a character named Henry Pelham who introduced an enduring ritual into English society. A dandy known for his pretentious behavior, Pelham dressed in black for dinner,… Read More ›
Caroline Clive’s popular novel Paul Ferroll was likely published at Clive’s expense, first advertised for sale in Publisher’s Circular. While Clive (1801–73) had published poetry, the novel was her first, and ultimately most successful, attempt at fiction. By March 1856,… Read More ›
Long touted as the first English novel, or at the least the first epistolary novel, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela has since had both those positions questioned in light of work by earlier writers, most notably Aphra Behn. It remains of extreme… Read More ›
The 19th-century Oxford Movement sought to reform the English church, reconstituting it on High Church principles. The movement formally began in July 1833 with a sermon by Oxford professor of poetry John Keble on national apostasy. Keble attacked threats to… Read More ›
Published like Charles Dickens’s other works, first as a serial from May 1864 through November 1865, Our Mutual Friend reflects the author’s traditional multiple plots. It would be Dickens’s final completed work, and some critics see it as the culmination… Read More ›
Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave was the first English novel offering a sympathetic view of the suffering of slaves. While little is known of Behn’s younger life, she claimed to have lived in Surinam, the setting for her story. First… Read More ›
In George Meredith’s One of Our Conquerors, the author employs his favored theme of marriages forced by society to the detriment of all involved, particularly females. His protagonist, 21-year-old Victor Radnor, is trapped in a pressured marriage to a rich… 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 ›
When Sir Walter Scott published the second in his Tales of My Landlord series in 1816, Old Mortality quickly became a favorite of his reading public. The novel focuses on the month of June 1679, with Scott compressing time to… 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 ›
As did most novels by George Gissing, The Odd Women focused on working-class poor in an uncaring society. The novel opens with six happy sisters, living with their widower physician father. He believes that women should not have to worry… Read More ›
In his third and most popular novel, Nightmare Abbey, Thomas Love Peacock supplied a parody of contemporary literature and authors that greatly resembled in format his previous satires, Headlong Hall (1816) and Melincourt (1817). All three contain little by way… Read More ›
In what critics label Joseph Conrad’s first accomplished work, he produces a text at once revered and criticized. Conrad asked W. E. Henley, poet and editor of The New Review, to publish the novel in his magazine. Conrad hoped that… 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 ›
George Gissing’s tendency to see life as catastrophe is apparent in his most popular and critically acclaimed novel, New Grub Street. Gissing’s personal experience, marked by brief imprisonment, two disastrous marriages, and a lifelong struggle to embody the ideals he… Read More ›
The label “Newgate fiction” applied to novels mainly of the 1830s depicting low-life characters and settings distinguished by a focus on crime. The authors Edward Bulwer-Lytton and William Harrison Ainsworth wrote the majority of Newgate fiction. The name for the… Read More ›
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