George Meredith’s fourth novel, Rhoda Fleming, dealt with a familiar theme: the pressure society places on both genders—but especially women—to conform to unrealistic expectations. That his culture governed love relationships with laws, such as those relating to marriage and divorce,… Read More ›
Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native moves at a slow pace that drives some readers to distraction. His narrative pace mirrors that of country life, very much a topic in his novel, featured in his setting of Egdon Heath…. Read More ›
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 ›
Oscar Wilde’s version of the Faust temptation tale, The Picture of Dorian Gray, proved so popular that it was later converted to drama and opera and imitated by other writers in subsequent novels. It first appeared in 1890 in Lippincott’s… Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
In his first novel, Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman, Edward Bulwer-Lytton shaped a character named Henry Pelham who introduced an enduring ritual into English society. A dandy known for his pretentious behavior, Pelham dressed in black for dinner,… Read More ›
Caroline Clive’s popular novel Paul Ferroll was likely published at Clive’s expense, first advertised for sale in Publisher’s Circular. While Clive (1801–73) had published poetry, the novel was her first, and ultimately most successful, attempt at fiction. By March 1856,… Read More ›
Published like Charles Dickens’s other works, first as a serial from May 1864 through November 1865, Our Mutual Friend reflects the author’s traditional multiple plots. It would be Dickens’s final completed work, and some critics see it as the culmination… Read More ›
In George Meredith’s One of Our Conquerors, the author employs his favored theme of marriages forced by society to the detriment of all involved, particularly females. His protagonist, 21-year-old Victor Radnor, is trapped in a pressured marriage to a rich… Read More ›
Likely Charles Dickens’s best-known novel, Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy’s Progress, first appeared in serial form in Bentley’s Miscellany between February 1837 and April 1839. The author’s third novel, it would later become the most dramatized of any fictional… Read More ›
As one of Charles Dickens’s early works, The Old Curiosity Shop, first published in the periodical Master Humphrey’s Clock from April 1840 to February 1841, was a favorite among his contemporary readers. That favorable reception changed over time, as readers… Read More ›
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 ›
George Gissing’s tendency to see life as catastrophe is apparent in his most popular and critically acclaimed novel, New Grub Street. Gissing’s personal experience, marked by brief imprisonment, two disastrous marriages, and a lifelong struggle to embody the ideals he… Read More ›
William Makepeace Thackeray issued in 24 installments what would become his most popular novel, first published between October 1853 and August 1855. In The Newcomes, Thackeray offered an uncomplimentary view of Victorian ideas of respectable marriages; hence, the meaningful subtitle… Read More ›
Despite criticism of Catherine Grace Gore’s work by notables such as William Makepeace Thackeray, it proved highly popular in its day and included some novels deemed superior to others. One of her best works, Mrs. Armytage, or, Female Domination, excels… Read More ›
Captain Frederick Marryat’s Mr. Midshipman Easy proved extremely popular. Informed by Marryat’s own naval experience, all his work allowed a gifted writer the opportunity to shape realistic adventure tales in which he expressed himself in a vigorous style undergirded by… Read More ›
The most tragic novel by George Eliot, this story is also her most autobiographical. It was published after her highly successful first novel, Adam Bede (1859), and it proved to be another great success, helping to establish Eliot’s reputation as… Read More ›
Often identified as the greatest English novel ever written, Middlemarch by George Eliot examines the lives of several members of the rising middle class in the early to middle 19th century in a midsized town in the Midlands of England…. Read More ›
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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