Literary Criticism
Contending Forces
Contending Forces is a powerful exploration of race, identity, and love set against the backdrop of a divided America. Pauline Elizabeth Hop…
Miscellaneous Essays
Miscellaneous Essays by Thomas De Quincey offers a captivating glimpse into the mind of one of the 19th century's most intriguing literary f…
A Common Story
Alexander Fedoritch Adouev is the naïve, pampered son of Anna Pavlovna, a provincial landowner. He decides to go off to Saint Petersbur…
Pan
Pan tells the story Lieutenant Glahn and his summer in a forest north in Norway. He lives in a hut with his dog Aesop and they spend their d…
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
This is Mark Twain's vicious and amusing review of Fenimore Cooper's literary art. It is still read widely in academic circles. Twain's essa…
Gobseck
Gobseck delves into the life of a shrewd and calculating pawnbroker, Jean-Esther Gobseck, whose financial dealings reveal the darker side of…
The Cossacks
The Cossacks (1863) is an unfinished novel which describes the Cossack life and people through a story of Dmitri Olenin, a Russian aristocra…
Anna of the Five Towns
The plot centers on Anna Tellwright, daughter of a wealthy but miserly and dictatorial father, living in the Potteries area of Staffordshire…
The Bostonians
This bittersweet tragicomedy centers on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political conservative from Mississippi; Olive Chance…
The Burning Secret
A lonely, convalescing 12 year-old boy and his attractive mother, who is in a loveless marriage, meet a gentleman while vacationing at a Eur…
Main Street
Carol Milford is a liberal, free-spirited young woman, reared in the metropolis of Minneapolis. She marries Will Kennicott, a doctor, who is…
Youth
Youth is the third installment in Leo Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy, following Childhood and Boyhood. In this reflective narrative, Tol…
In the Cage
In the Cage is a novella by Henry James, first published as a book in 1898. This long story centers on an unnamed London telegraphist. She d…
The American Language
"It was part of my daily work, for a good many years, to read the principal English newspapers and reviews; it has been part of my work…
Christmas Stories
Twenty stories originally published in the Christmas editions of the magazines “Household Words” and “All The Year Round”. Some of the stori…
Maria Chapdelaine
The novel Maria Chapdelaine portrays life in rural Quebec at the beginning of the 20th century. Published first in French in 1913, it is a f…
The House of the Seven Gables
The House of the Seven Gables is a gloomy New England mansion, haunted from its foundation by fraudulent dealings, accusations of witchcraft…
At the Foot of the Rainbow
This story is about three people, two men and a woman. Jimmy, selfish and deceitful, who has shamelessly lied to, cheated, and used his dear…
Maude
Maude is a novella by Christina Rossetti, written in 1850 but published posthumously in 1897. Considered by scholars to be semi-autobiograph…
Mother
Mother by Kathleen Norris explores the profound relationship between a daughter and her mother through the lens of domestic life. As Margare…