England, My England is the title of a collection of short stories by D. H. Lawrence. Individual items were originally written between 1913 and 1921, many of them against the background of World War I. Most of these versions were placed in magazines or periodicals. Ten were later selected and extensively revised by... read more »
Tancred; or, The New Crusade is a novel by Benjamin Disraeli, first published by Henry Colburn in three volumes. Together with Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845) it forms a sequence sometimes called the Young England trilogy. It shares a number of characters with the earlier novels, but unlike them is concerned less... read more »
Being A Most Curious, Hitherto Unknown History, As Related To Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff But Not Presented To the World of Fashion ... and Now for the First Time Written Down by Frances Hodgson Burnett - the first of series of successful historical novels by Burnett. read more »
Sybil, or The Two Nations is one of the finest novels to depict the social problems of class-ridden Victorian England. When published, it was a sensation for its immediacy and readability brought the plight of the working classes sharply to the attention of the reading public. The 'Two Nations' of the alternative... read more »
This is one of Disreali's best novels, not as a story, but as a study of men, manners, and principles. The plot is slight -- little better than a device for stringing together sketches of character and statements of political and economic opinions; but these are always interesting and often brilliant. The motive... read more »
A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr. Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighboring squire—though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. When Tom is banished to make his own... read more »
Set in a former abbey whose owner, Christopher Glowry, is host to visitors who enjoy his hospitality and engage in endless debate. Among these guests are figures recognizable to Peacock's contemporaries, including characters based on Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr. Glowry's son Scythrop (also modeled on... read more »
As in his earlier novel Headlong Hall, Peacock assembles a group of eccentrics, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humour and social satire from their various interactions and conversations. The character who most closely approximates to the author's own voice is the Reverend Doctor Folliott, a... read more »
Hugo's story unfolds the life of a reclusive fisherman, Gilliat, who lives on the Isle of Guernsey, where Hugo himself was exiled for a large portion of his life. When Gilliat becomes a young man, he falls in love with Déruchette, the beautiful niece of wealthy ship-owner Lethierry. When Lethierry's steamship... read more »
Orphaned at an early age, raised by his aunt and uncle, and apprenticed for seven years to a draper, Artie Kipps is stunned to discover upon reading a newspaper advertisement that he is the grandson of a wealthy gentleman and the inheritor of his fortune. Thrown dramatically into the upper classes, he struggles... read more »
I am not an interesting person by any means. You shall judge. I shall be forty-two my next birthday. That anniversary will occur on the first of May, 1873; and I am unmarried. I don't look quite the old maid I am, they tell me. They say I don't look five-and-thirty, and I am conscious, sitting before the glass, that... read more »
Volume 2 of Richardson's classic Pamela. One of the most spectacular successes of the burgeoning literary marketplace of eighteeent-century London, Pamela also marked a defining moment in the emergence of the modern novel. In the words of one contemporary, it divided the world 'into two different Parties, Pamelists... read more »
Volume 1 of Richardson's classic Pamela. One of the most spectacular successes of the burgeoning literary marketplace of eighteeent-century London, Pamela also marked a defining moment in the emergence of the modern novel. In the words of one contemporary, it divided the world 'into two different Parties, Pamelists... read more »
This is Volume 9 of Samuel Richardson's classic novel; Clarissa. Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an... read more »
This is Volume 8 of Samuel Richardson's classic novel; Clarissa. Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an... read more »
This is Volume 7 of Samuel Richardson's classic novel; Clarissa. Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an... read more »
This is Volume 6 of Samuel Richardson's classic novel; Clarissa. Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an... read more »
This is Volume 5 of Samuel Richardson's classic novel; Clarissa. Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an... read more »
This is Volume 4 of Samuel Richardson's classic novel; Clarissa. Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an... read more »
This is Volume 3 of Samuel Richardson's classic novel; Clarissa. Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an... read more »
This is Volume 2 of Samuel Richardson's classic novel; Clarissa. Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an... read more »
This is Volume 1 of Samuel Richardson's classic novel; Clarissa. Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an... read more »
Anne Elliot is one of Austen's quietest heroines, but also one of the strongest and the most open to change. She lives at the time of the Napoleonic wars, a time of accident, adventure, the making of new fortunes and alliances. A woman of no importance, she manoeuvres in her restricted circumstances as her long-time... read more »
Nicholas Nickleby was hailed as a comic triumph and firmly established Dickens as a 'literary gentleman'. It has a full supporting cast of delectable characters that range from the iniquitous Wackford Squeers and his family, to the delightful Mrs Nickleby, taking in the eccentric Crummles and his travelling players... read more »
Charles Dickens's first book, Sketches by Boz, heralded an exciting new voice in English literature. This richly varied collection of observation, fancy and fiction shows the London he knew so intimately at its best and worst - its streets, theatres, inns, pawnshops, law courts, prisons, omnibuses and the river... read more »
"The Valley of the Moon" traces the odyssey of Billy and Saxon Roberts from the labor strife of Oakland at the turn of the century through Central and Northern California in search of land they can farm independently - a journey that echoes Jack London's own escape from urban poverty. As London lost hope in the... read more »
Set and published during the time of the British Raj, a time of subalterns and tea planters, the 40 stories in Plain Tales From The Hills are played out under an unforgiving sun, revealing the deceit, faithlessness, shallowness, despair, mistrust, hate, and petty jealousies rife amongst the British inhabitants of... read more »
Perhaps Joyce's most personal work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man depicts the intellectual awakening of one of literature's most memorable young heroes, Stephen Dedalus. Through a series of brilliant epiphanies that parallel the development of his own aesthetic consciousness, Joyce evokes Stephen's youth... read more »
Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively... read more »
Poor Folk is an epistolary novel -- that is, a tale told as a series of letters between the characters. And oh, what characters these are! Makar Dievushkin Alexievitch is a copy writer, barely squeaking by; Barbara Dobroselova Alexievna works as a seamstress, and both face the sort of everyday humiliation society... read more »