Published as volume seven in Snow’s 11-volume series Strangers and Brothers, the events of this story actually place it immediately after the action of the introductory novel of the series. The year is 1927 as the story opens, with the… Read More ›
British Literature
Analysis of Lindsay Clarke’s The Chymical Wedding
Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1989, this novel combines aspects of romance fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy to freshen the telling of a double set of complex relationships. Reminiscent of The French Lieutenant’s Woman by… Read More ›
Analysis of Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time
Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1987, this novel chronicles a father’s tragic loss, his deep grief, and his reconciliation to the world of the living. The protagonist is Stephen Lewis, a successful writer of children’s… Read More ›
Analysis of Anthony Powell’s Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant
The fifth of twelve volumes in Powell’s roman-fleuve entitled A Dance to the Music of Time, this novel continues the first-person point-of-view narration of Nicholas Jenkins, a writer, as he experiences the arts scene in London during 1936–37, meeting musicians,… Read More ›
Analysis of Anthony Powell’s A Buyer’s Market
The second of twelve volumes in Powell’s roman-fleuve entitled A Dance to the Music of Time, this novel continues the first-person point of view narration of Nicholas Jenkins, a writer, as he enters the social whirl of debutante parties in… Read More ›
Analysis of Anthony Powell’s Books Do Furnish a Room
The 10th of 12 volumes in Powell’s roman-fleuve entitled A Dance to the Music of Time, this novel continues the story of Nicholas Jenkins, a writer, as he returns to a peace-time life at the end of World War II…. Read More ›
Analysis of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time
The third of 12 volumes in Powell’s roman-fleuve entitled A Dance to the Music of Time, this novel uses a first-person point of view to continue the narrative of Nicholas Jenkins, a writer, as he completes his transition to adulthood… Read More ›
Analysis of Jane Austen’s Persuasion
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
Analysis of Charles Reade’s It Is Never Too Late to Mend
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 ›
Analysis of Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
When Tobias Smollett published the last of his novels, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, he used the familiar epistolary novel form first made famous by Samuel Richardson. Five of his flat, predictable characters wrote letters that differed in their points… Read More ›
Analysis of Samuel Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison
When Samuel Richardson began The History of Sir Charles Grandison, he had no plan other than to present a moral tale to counter the bawdy tone and content of Henry Fielding’s wildly popular The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling… Read More ›
Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds
The third in his sequence of Palliser novels, The Eustace Diamonds represents one of Anthony Trollope’s darkest tales. He departs from his gently ironic presentations of everyday human relationships with their small but important emotional battles. This novel focuses on… Read More ›
Analysis of George Moore’s Esther Waters
George Moore’s novel Esther Waters proved his most successful work. The novel’s realistic portrayal of the hardships of a servant girl departed from the oversentimentality by which much Victorian fiction, and some of Moore’s earlier works, were marked. According to… Read More ›
Analysis of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon
Samuel Butler’s Erewhon took its place in an honored tradition as satire against what Butler perceived as the intellectual, emotional, and moral stagnation of English society and human nature in general. Revolting against the Victorian values that negatively affected English… Read More ›
Analysis of Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline
Like all Charlotte Smith’s novels, her first, Emmeline, contained strong autobiographical elements. Through fiction, Smith found a way to protest her situation as mother to a large brood of children with a profligate husband who had abandoned the family. According… Read More ›
Analysis of Ellen Wood’s East Lynne
East Lynne represents prototypical 19th-century sensation fiction, extremely popular with English readers. The novel was the second for Mrs. Henry (Ellen Price) Wood, who had begun publishing highly moralistic fiction at the age of 41. It became an immediate hit… Read More ›
Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son
Charles Dickens’s seventh novel, first published in 20 serial parts between October 1846 and April 1848 with the complete title Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, Retail, Wholesale, and for Exploration, marked what many critics agree to be… Read More ›
Analysis of George Gissing’s Demos: A Story of English Socialism
Reflective of his general focus on hard work as an anecdote to failure and poverty, George Gissing’s Demos: A Story of English Socialism blasts socialism as an ideal never to be realized, due to the greed of its leaders. He… Read More ›
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