Literary Criticism
Deephaven
Sarah Orne Jewett is best known for her clean and clear descriptive powers that at once elevate common-place daily events to something remar…
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life is one of the last great works completed by Balzac for his huge novel series entitled The Human Comedy. Sect…
The Descent of Man
This collection of ten stories, first published in 1904, shows Edith Wharton dissecting some of the customs, habits and vagaries of courtshi…
Madame Bovary
Written over a century and a half ago, Madame Bovary is still an extraordinarily fresh, exciting and shockingly frank novel, at once an acut…
Candide
Candide is a relentless, brutal assault on government, society, religion, education, and, above all, optimism. Dr. Pangloss teaches his youn…
The Aspern Papers
One of James’s favorite short novels, the Aspern Papers tells of the efforts of the nameless narrator to procure the papers of a famous, bu…
King Coal
King Coal is a book by Upton Sinclair, first published in 1917, that exposes the dirty working conditions in the coal mining industry in the…
Hilda Lessways
This book is the second in Bennett’s four books about life in the Five Towns (the real life Potteries in Staffordshire). It tells the story …
The Permanent Husband
THE PERMANENT HUSBAND, also published as The Eternal Husband, is a psychological novella by the acclaimed Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky.…
The Beautiful and Damned
The Beautiful and Damned explores the lives of Anthony Patch and his wife, Gloria, as they navigate the opulent yet tumultuous world of 1920…
Sons and Lovers
Lawrence summarised the plot of Sons and Lovers in a letter to Edward Garnett in 1912:“It follows this idea: a woman of character and refine…
Dubliners
Dubliners is a collection of poignant short stories that capture the essence of life in early 20th-century Dublin. Through a series of vivid…
The Mysterious Stranger
Here's a Mark Twain story that's very unlike those he became famous for, but when I read it back in Catholic high school, it left a deep imp…
The Sun Also Rises
The Sun Also Rises (1926) was Hemingway's first novel to be published, though there is his novella The Torrents of Spring which was publishe…
The Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis (in German, Die Verwandlung, "The Transformation") is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915, and arg…
Charles Dickens
In this insightful biography, G. K. Chesterton explores the life and literary contributions of Charles Dickens, one of the most celebrated a…
Indian Summer
Set in Florence's Anglo-American colony in the late 19th century, this is a romantic story of a middle-aged man, returning to the scene of h…
Notes from the Underground
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short masterpiece about a ranting, slightly mad civil servant. The stylistic inventiveness, and the insights into the a…
Sons and Lovers
This intimate portrait of a coal-miner's family fastens on each member in turn: Walter Morel, the collier; Gertrude, his wife; and the child…
The Claverings
"I consider the story as a whole to he good, though I am not aware that the public ever corroborated that verdict." - the author T…