Sir Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward was one of three novels Scott issued in 1823. The first edition was printed in 10,000 copies, the sheets carried in bales by steamship to London on May 16, 1823, where binders worked the night… Read More ›
feminist criticism
Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s The Prime Minister
The Prime Minister took its place as Anthony Trollope’s fifth book in the Palliser sequence. It first appeared as a serial between November 1875 and June 1876, before its issue in four volumes. While many of Trollope’s contemporaries, including Henry… Read More ›
Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux
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 ›
Analysis of George Gissing’s The Odd Women
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 ›
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 ›
Analysis of Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth
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 ›
Analysis of Emily Lawless’s Hurrish: A Study
As indicated by its subtitle, Hurrish: A Study was intended by Emily Lawless to reflect as much about Ireland’s general masses as about any one person. Thus, her characters serve as basic types or symbols. They scratch out a living… Read More ›
Analysis of George Moore’s Evelyn Innes
George Moore’s melodramatic romance novel Evelyn Innes is replete with characters based on real people. The author fashioned Evelyn’s father after the French-born musician Arnold Dolmetsch (1858–1940), who studied Renaissance music and the instruments that produced it in London. A… Read More ›
Analysis of George Meredith Diana of the Crossways
When George Meredith published his 1885 novel, Diana of the Crossways, women readers welcomed his heroine as representative of recent social reforms. The novel reflects its era’s obsessive interest in the breakdown of standards, which had been part of a… Read More ›
Analysis of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda
The last of George Eliot’s seven novels, published in eight parts between February and September 1876, Daniel Deronda has a double structure that follows two protagonists, Daniel Deronda and Gwendolyn Harleth, in their intertwined search for self-fulfillment. Eliot breaks new… Read More ›
Analysis of Sarah Fielding’s David Simple
Sarah Fielding described David Simple as a “moral romance.” The episodic novel took a timely approach to the romance genre, moving away from the traditional chivalric tales to a story based on codes of middle-class ideology. Modern critics note that… Read More ›
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