Prompted by his theories of heredity and environment, Zola set out out to show Nana, the golden fly, rising out of the underworld to feed on society--a predetermined product of her origins. Nana's latent destructiveness is mirrored in the Empire's, and they reflect each others' disintegration and final collapse in... read more »
With flawless construction and impeccable detail, Germinal chronicles the conflicts, lusts, and deprivation of life in the coal fields of nineteenth-century France. A father and three of seven children work brutal hours, facing such hazards as landslides, fire, and poisoned air, to scrape together enough money for... read more »
Visiting an idyllic German village, Werther, a sensitive and romantic young man, meets and falls in love with sweet-natured Lotte. Although he realizes that Lotte is to marry Albert, he is unable to subdue his passion for her, and his infatuation torments him to the point of absolute despair. The first great... read more »
One of Zola's most famous realistic novels, Therese Raquin is a clinically observed, sinister tale of adultery and murder among the lower classes in nineteenth-century Parisian society. Set in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a dingy haberdasher's shop in the passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, this powerful novel tells... read more »
Set in Manchester in the 1840s, Mary Barton depicts the effects of economic and physical hardship upon the city's working-class community. Paralleling the novel's treatment of the relationship between masters and men, the suffering of the poor, and the workmen's angry response, is the story of Mary herself--a... read more »
An epistolary novel - the first ever written - and an innovative and pioneering work. An exploration of the sexual politics of seventeenth century English society, the novel follows Sylvia's love for her brother-in-law, her sexual awakening and her inevitable downfall. read more »
When Prince Oroonoko's passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko's noble bearing soon wins the respect of his English captors, but his struggle for freedom brings about his destruction... read more »
Albertine has finally escaped her 'imprisonment' from Marcel's Paris apartment... Not only is Marcel quite unprepared for the effect her flight has on him, but also soon he is devastated by news of an even more irreversible loss. read more »
Lady Ludlow is absolute mistress of Hanbury Court and a resolute opponent of anything that might disturb the class system into which she was born. She will keep no servant who can read and write and insists that the lower orders have no rights, but only duties. But the winds of change are blowing through the village... read more »
A haunting, beautifully controlled novella, Cousin Phyllis is considered to be among Elizabeth Gaskell's finest short works. Lodging with a minister on the outskirts of London, Paul Manning is initially dismayed to discover that the uncle he must visit in the country is also a churchman. Yet far from the... read more »
Ruth Hilton is an orphaned young seamstress who catches the eye of a gentleman, Henry Bellingham, who is captivated by her simplicity and beauty. When she loses her job and home, he offers her comfort and shelter, only to cruelly desert her soon after. Nearly dead with grief and shame, Ruth is offered the chance of... read more »
When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and... read more »
The Caxtons are; Austin Caxton, a scholar engaged on a great work, 'The History of Human Error;' his wife Kitty, much his junior; his brother Roland, the Captain, who has served in the Napoleonic campaigns; the two children of the latter, Herbert and Blanche; and Austin's son, Pisistratus, who tells the story. The... read more »
The whole artist, whose work we are about to study side by side with his life, is summed up in this anecdote. It reveals one of the most typical sides of his temperament, and, consequently, of his talent: a constant and scrupulous endeavour, maintained even at the price of sacrifices that would seem excessive to the... read more »
From the author of The Prisoner of Zenda. A highly clever performance with little touches that recall both Balzac and Meredith...is endowed with exceeding originality. In this 1893 novel, a young poet, Dale Bannister, suddenly finds himself possessed of fame and fortune. He moves to the town of Denborough, where he... read more »
A multi-layered psychological masterpiece of human perversity and pride in the face of love and sensual attraction. Romantically awkward hunter, fisherman and nature-lover Lieutenant Thomas Glahn lives in a cabin away from society -- alone, except for his dog and occasional interactions with the locals including the... read more »
A must-read for fans of modernist literature, Hunger is a literary tour de force that was influenced equally by Dostoyevsky and Zola but made new by author Knut Hamsun's unique creative approach. The novel details the descent into near-starvation of a young intellectual and the downward spiral of misadventures he... read more »
Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium and former Prime Minister of England, is widowed and wracked by grief. Struggling to adapt to life without his beloved Lady Glencora, he works hard to guide and support his three adult children. Palliser soon discovers, however, that his own plans for them are very different... read more »
The fourth novel in Trollope's Palliser series, Phineas Redux stands on its own as a compelling work of political intrigue, personal crisis, and romantic jealousy. Phineas Finn lives quietly in Dublin, resigned to the fact that his political career is over and coming to terms with the death of his wife. He receives... read more »
Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement," Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood satirizes Victorian hypocrisy in its chronicle of the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex. Along the way, it offers a powerful indictment of 19th-century England's... read more »
Set in Baden-Baden, Smoke is Ivan Turgenev's most cosmopolitan novels. It is an exquisite study of politics and society and an enduringly poignant love story. Smoke, with its European setting, barbed wit, and visionary call for Russia to look west, became the center of a famous philosophical breach between Turgenev... read more »
The final volume of In Search of Lost Time chronicles the years of World War I, when, as M. de Charlus reflects on a moonlit walk, Paris threatens to become another Pompeii. Years later, after the war's end, Proust's narrator returns to Paris, where Mme. Verdurin has become the Princesse de Guermantes. He reflects... read more »
When a young graduate returns home he is accompanied, much to his father and uncle's discomfort, by a strange friend 'who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith.' Turgenev's masterpiece of generational conflict shocked Russian society when it was published in 1862 and... read more »
Taras Bulba is a magnificent story portraying the life of the Ukrainian Cossacks who lived by the Dnieper River in the sixteenth century. Taras Bulba is an old and hardened warrior who feels a little rusty from lack of action. When his two sons return from school at Kiev, he eagerly takes them to the 'setch,' the... read more »
When publiched, Within a Budding Grove was awarded the Prix Goncourt, bringing the author immediate fame. In this second volume of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator turns from the childhood reminiscences of Swann's Way to memories of his adolescence. Having gradually become indifferent to Swann's daughter... read more »
The Overcoat is a short story by author Nikolai Gogol, published in 1842. The story and its author have had great influence on Russian literature, thus spawning Fyodor Dostoyevsky's famous quote: "We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'." The story has been adapted into a variety of stage and film interpretations... read more »
Turgenev was the first writer who was able, having both Slavic and universal imagination enough for it, to interpret modern Russia to the outer world, and Virgin Soil was the last word of his greater testament. It was the book in which many English readers were destined to make his acquaintance about a generation... read more »
The Charterhouse of Parma chronicles the exploits of Fabrizio del Dongo, an ardent young aristocrat who joins Napoleon's army just before the Battle of Waterloo. Yet perhaps the novel's most unforgettable characters are the hero's beautiful aunt, the alluring Duchess of Sanseverina, and her lover, Count Mosca, who... read more »
The Darling is a short story by Russian author Anton Chekhov, first published in 1899 in London, it follows the life of a woman who is referred to as darling. Olenka Plemyannikova, the daughter of a retired collegiate assessor, falls in love with the theater owner, Kukin. Olenka’s father dies and she marries... read more »
In The Captive, Proust's narrator describes living in his mother's Paris apartment with his lover, Albertine, and subsequently falling out of love with her. The Prisoner (also translated as The Captive) is the first volume of the section within In Search of Lost Time known as the Albertine novel. The name Albertine... read more »