Literary Criticism
Three Years
Laptev, the rich but unattractive scion of a merchant, renounces his independent-minded, intelligent, devoted, but equally unattractive mist…
Don Quixote
Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered the mo…
The Bertrams
This is a massive effort, taking place in England and the Middle East, with a cast of thousands... Well, not thousands, fortunately, but cer…
Chronicles of Avonlea
In this first collection of stories following the characters from the "Anne of Green Gables" series, we see 12 vignettes into the …
Anne Severn and the Fieldings
Written in an era of cheap, formulaic romantic fiction, the nuanced, seditious, quietly erotic novels of May Sinclair stand out like literat…
The Duel
Known for his plays and short stories, Anton Chekhov also wrote a series of novellas, astonishing for their psychological complexity and com…
An Ideal Husband
The "Ideal Husband" of the title is Sir Robert Chiltern, with his equally upright wife Lady Chiltern. He has never committed a cri…
The Professor
The Professor follows the journey of William Crimsworth, a young man navigating the complexities of ambition, love, and self-discovery in 19…
A Hazard of New Fortunes
Howell’s novel is set in New York of the late nineteenth century, a city familiar to readers of Edith Wharton and Henry James. Basil March, …
The Money Moon
Rejected in love, the incredibly rich (but appropriately modest) George Bellew walks into a small English village populated with a cast of m…
Roderick Hudson
Published as a serial in 1875, Roderick Hudson is James's first important novel. The theme of Americans in Europe, so important in much of J…
Barchester Towers
This is the second in Trollope’s ‘Barsetshire’ series of novels. The later novels in the series move away from Barchester itself but 'Barche…
Lost Illusions
Ève and David (1843) is the final book in Balzac’s Lost Illusions trilogy, which is part of his sweeping set of novels collectively t…
Tolstoy on Shakespeare
In this thought-provoking essay, Leo Tolstoy presents a critical examination of William Shakespeare's works, exploring the playwright's them…
Against The Grain
Against The Grain is a provocative exploration of aestheticism and the complexities of modern existence, penned by Joris-Karl Huysmans. This…
Daisy Miller
Daisy Miller is an 1878 novella by Henry James. It portrays the confused courtship of the eponymous American girl by Winterbourne, a compatr…
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…
The Country of the Pointed Firs
The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) is considered Jewett’s finest work, described by Henry James as her “beautiful little quantum of achi…
The Colonel's Dream
In this novel, Chesnutt described the hopelessness of Reconstruction in a post-Civil War South that was bent on reestablishing the former st…
Ulysses
Ulysses is a groundbreaking novel in which Irish author James Joyce explores realism through stream-of-consciousness technique and shifting …