Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote a fantasy/science fiction piece in his novel Zanoni. The novel’s protagonist, labeled by those familiar with him in Italy “the rich Zanoni . . . his wealth is incalculable!,” possesses special powers of the occult that give… Read More ›
Thomas Hardy first published The Woodlanders as a serial in Macmillan’s Magazine between May 1886 and April 1887. It emphasizes themes of marriage and adultery, faith and duplicity, and, a favorite element for Hardy, unrequited love and the human propensity… Read More ›
With Coningsby, or the New Generation (1844), and Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845), Benjamin Disraeli’s Tancred, or the New Crusade made up his most successful and famous trilogy of works. All deal with individuals caught in the conflict of… Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
William Makepeace Thackeray published his second novel, The History of Pendennis, as a serial between November 1848 and December 1850. It ran at the same time as Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, a novel to which it is often compared. The… Read More ›
Robert Smith Surtees became the most popular of the “squire novelists” with his series featuring the inexpert fox-hunting enthusiast and London grocer John Jorrocks. Made famous first in Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities and later in its sequel, Handley Cross (1843),… Read More ›
Later to become famous for his thesis novels, Benjamin Disraeli used the popularity of silver-fork fiction to produce a romance in Henrietta Temple. While the plot did emphasize the pressures placed on individuals by society to marry well, that is… Read More ›
Charles Reade, a playwright as well as a novelist, became well known for his attacks against human injustice and his pleas for compassion through his fiction, of which Griffith Gaunt became a strong example. Reade’s fiction proved melodramatic and dealt… Read More ›
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