Recent Posts - page 29
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Analysis of Thomas Love Peacock’s Melincourt
Thomas Love Peacock wrote his second novel, Melincourt or Sir Oran Hautton, with the goal of lambasting various political and literary figures. The book proved more ambitious, particularly in its length, than its predecessor, Headlong Hall (1816). Some critics found its… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy first published The Life and Death of the Mayor of Casterbridge: A Man of Character in serial parts; it appeared in The Graphic between January and May 1886, to be published in book form later that year. It… Read More ›
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Analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae
Robert Louis Stevenson found himself attracted to the subject matter of his novel The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter’s Tale due to his interest in the years following Jacobite Scotland’s 1745 rebellion. He also drew inspiration from Captain Marryat, commenting,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton
Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel of social injustice, Mary Barton, was banned in 1907 by the London County Council, which deemed the novel unfit for children aged 14 and under. That action supports the power of Gaskell’s prose to influence readers in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Mary: A Fiction
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her first novel, Mary: A Fiction, to express her most personal beliefs. An autobiographical work, Mary has been evaluated by later critics as too sentimental an expression to represent high-quality writing, and that inferiority in expression results… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit
Charles Dickens first published his sixth novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, as a 10-part serial between January 1843 and July 1844. He later stated that he thought the lengthy tale of a young man’s emotional and ethical maturation the “best” of his… Read More ›
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Analysis of Susan Ferrier’s Marriage
Susan Ferrier’s first novel, Marriage, has been labeled “shrewdly observant” by one critic and a novel “justified by its painting of Scottish manners” by another. Compared to her contemporaries Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, Ferrier develops her plot mostly within… Read More ›
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Analysis of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park
Jane Austen began writing Mansfield Park in 1811 but did not publish it until 1814. With this, the penultimate novel published during her lifetime, she focused on financially comfortable small communities of individuals, raising the quotidian to a level of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Henry Mackenzie’s A Man of Feeling
Henry Mackenzie’s A Man of Feeling owed a debt to Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random (1748). Like Smollett’s protagonist, the good-hearted Harley of Mackenzie’s tale is a naive traveler in a too-sophisticated world, sacrificed to professional cardsharps. A narrator that readers… Read More ›
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Analysis of Aphra Behn’s Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister
While Aphra Behn’s Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister is not a well-known work, it remains crucial to the development of the novel. Many sources, including Ian Watt in his landmark work The Rise of the Novel (1957),… Read More ›
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Analysis of Benjamin Disraeli’s Lothair
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 ›
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Analysis of George Meredith’s Lord Ormont and His Aminta
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 ›
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Analysis of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy
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 ›
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Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit
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 ›
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Analysis of Robert Paltock’s The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins
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 ›
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Analysis of Sir Walter Scott’s The Legend of Montrose
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 ›
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Analysis of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii
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 ›
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Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s The Last Chronicle of Barset
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 ›
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Analysis of Mary Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret
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 ›
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Analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped
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 ›
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