Benjamin Disraeli wrote Lothair 23 years after his last novel, Tancred (1847). His political career had prevented his pursuit of fiction, but when the general election of 1868 propelled Gladstone to power in Disraeli’s place, he decided to return to… Read More ›
When George Meredith wrote Lord Ormont and His Aminta, he focused on a theme he would use again: incompatibility in marriage. Many critics considered it a slight work; some felt Meredith wrote it during a break after the far more… Read More ›
In one of history’s best-beloved novels for children, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Frances Hodgson Burnett emphasizes the importance of love over material wealth. Before the birth of the little lord, Cedric Errol, his aristocratic father, Captain Cedric, marries beneath himself, angering… Read More ›
First published as a 20-part serial between December 1855 and June 1857, Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit served to expose several social abuses of interest to its author, including rampant financial corruption and an incompetent civil service, where members were appointed… Read More ›
The sole novel written by Robert Paltock, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, is one of the earliest written examples of science fiction in English, enjoyed as children by notables including the poet Robert Southey; critic, poet, and journalist… Read More ›
The Legend of Montrose became the third in Sir Walter Scott’s Tales of My Landlord series. As with most of Scott’s novels, this one is actually based on a “tale” popular in his day, explained by Scott in his introduction…. Read More ›
Edward Bulwer-Lytton found an opportunity to capitalize on his interest in the past and wrote the historical fiction The Last Days of Pompeii. While he had looked to the past for novel plots before, his choice of ancient Italy as… Read More ›
Victorian readers enjoyed reunions with familiar characters in Anthony Trollope’s final entry into his Barsetshire series, The Last Chronicle of Barset, claimed by Trollope to be his favorite of all his novels. He approaches his topic of everyday people living… Read More ›
First serialized in Robin Goodfellow and then in The Sixpenny Magazine, Mary Braddon’s most famous novel, Lady Audley’s Secret, became an instant hit with the reading public, if not with critics. In its year of publication in volume form, 1862,… Read More ›
Robert Louis Stevenson continued in the vein of writing adventure stories for boys when he published Kidnapped, first as a serial in a boy’s magazine. However, adults had taken notice of his accomplished style in earlier novels, such as Treasure… Read More ›
In his novel Kenilworth, Sir Walter Scott tells his romanticized version of the death of Amy Robsart, wife to Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, favored by Queen Elizabeth I. Set in 1560, the novel seeks to, as Scott writes… Read More ›
Like other novels by Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure offers a bleak picture of the choices available to the working man. First published as a serial in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine between December 1894 and November 1895, the novel upset… Read More ›
While it purports to be a journal, Daniel Defoe’s novel, A Journal of the Plague Year, is an imaginatively drawn “history” of the Great Plague that seized England from 1664 to 1665. Defoe likely based his narrator, a Whitechapel saddler… Read More ›
Henry Fielding received some criticism for romanticizing a common criminal in his novel The History of the Life of the Late Jonathan Wild the Great. Based on the career of a well-known criminal executed earlier in the 18th century, the… Read More ›
Dinah Mulock (Craik) emphasized nonconformist ideals in her popular fifth novel, John Halifax, Gentleman. Nonconformist churches believed that each member should freely respond to the Gospel and take responsibility for their own membership, while the church should maintain its congregation’s… Read More ›
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is the story of the protagonist’s quest, not for material treasure, but rather for equality and selfhood. Equally important, Jane seeks the proper manner to rebel against men who seek to dominate and control her, eventually… Read More ›
Sir Walter Scott’s most popular novel, Ivanhoe, takes place during the 12th-century reign of Richard I. While historians took him to task for incorrectly extending the Saxon-Norman conflict into that century, the public enthusiastically received his tale of knights, displaced… Read More ›
Already known as a writer with a social conscience, Charles Reade published It Is Never Too Late to Mend specifically to stimulate public interest in social revolution. He proved successful, spurring his reading public to lead a movement to reform… Read More ›
Described by some critics as gruesome and by others as grim, H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau depends on the mad scientist characterization that would continue to be popular into the 20th century. Intent on transmitting a moral… Read More ›
H. G. Wells often used his science fiction tales to teach a moral lesson. In The Invisible Man, he warns against the abuse of scientific capability and the misuse of power it encourages. The protagonist, Griffin, was driven to find… Read More ›
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