Subject: Classic Fiction
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Home of the Gentry Ivan Turgenev
Coming back to the nest of his family home in Russia after years of fruitless endeavours away from his roots, Lavretsky decides to turn his back on the vacuous salons of Paris and his frivolous and unfaithful wife Varvara Pavlovna. On his return he meets Liza, the daughter of one of his cousins, whom he had known... read more »
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Moran of the Lady Letty Frank Norris
This is to be a story of a battle, at least one murder, and several sudden deaths. For that reason it begins with a pink tea and among the mingled odors of many delicate perfumes and the hale, frank smell of Caroline Testout roses. There had been a great number of debutantes 'coming out' that season in San Francisco... read more »
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Sodom and Gomorrah Marcel Proust
The narrator not only depicts the class tensions of a changing France at the beginning of the twentieth century but also exposes the decadence of aristocratic Parisian society and muses upon the subjects of homosexuality and sexual jealousy. Taking up for the first time in his novels, Proust explores the theme of... read more »
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Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wilhelm Meister, the son of a merchant, has been seduced by the chimerical world of the theater and embarks on the ambitious quest to become a great theatrical performer and dramatist. The Apprenticeship was a landmark in European literature, as not only one of the key works of Weimar Classicism, and the prototype... read more »
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Paris Émile Zola
The concluding volume of the Three Cities trilogy is very different from Lourdes and Rome. Whilst recounting the struggles and fate of Abbe Froment and his brother Guillaume, and entering largely into the problem of Capital and Labour, which problem has done so much to turn the masses away from Christianity, it... read more »
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Rome Émile Zola
Three years after his visit to Lourdes, Abbé Pierre Froment has written an ecumenical work, New Rome, that has been placed on the Index. In an attempt to have this veto lifted he travels to Rome, where he is subjected to a variety of subtle delaying tactics designed to bring him to contrition and resignation. His... read more »
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The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta Giovanni Boccaccio
A milestone in feminist literature, this marvelous European romance, narrated by a woman, is considered the first psychological novel in a modern language and a precursor of stream-of-consciousness fiction. Lady Fiammetta, the first-person narrator and protagonist, recounts how, although a married woman, she falls... read more »
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A Christmas Greeting Hans Christian Andersen
During a visit with Chalse Dickens in England, there sprung forth--as the flowers spring forth in the forest--these short stories for the festive season, five of which were previously unpublished upon release. A Christmas greeting sent to Dickens. *Contents*: The Old House, The Drop of Water, The Happy Family, The... read more »
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Don Quixote, Part 2 Miguel de Cervantes
Alonso Quixano is a minor landowner who has read so many stories of chivalry that he descends into fantasy and becomes convinced he is a knight errant. Together with his companion Sancho Panza, the self-styled Don Quixote de la Mancha sets out in search of adventures. His 'lady' is Dulcinea del Toboso, an imaginary... read more »
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Don Quixote, Part 1 Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances, that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways. While Quixote's fancy often leads him astray – he tilts at windmills, imagining them to... read more »
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Lourdes Émile Zola
In this moving depiction of a pilgrimage to Lourdes, the master French realist has created a novel of vivid characters and subtle commentary on suffering and the belief in miracles as the last desperate refuge from pain. Based on his own trip to the fabled grotto, the novel follows a simple five-part structure... read more »
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Dred Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe's second antislavery novel was written partly in response to the criticisms of Uncle Tom's Cabin by both white Southerners and black abolitionists. In Dred, Stowe attempts to explore the issue of slavery from an African American perspective. Through the compelling stories of Nina Gordon, the... read more »
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The Last Day of a Condemned Man Victor Hugo
Deeply shocking in its time, this is a profound and moving tale and a vital work of social commentary. A man vilified by society and condemned to death for his crime wakes every morning knowing that this day might be his last. With the hope for release his only comfort, he spends his hours recounting his life and... read more »
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L'Assommoir Émile Zola
Abandoned by her lover and left to bring up their two children alone, Gervaise Macquart has to fight to earn an honest living. When she accepts the marriage proposal of Monsieur Coupeau, it seems as though she is on the path to a decent, respectable life at last. But with her husband's drinking and the unexpected... read more »
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The Green Ray Jules Verne
Most of the marvels or impossibilities in here are to be found in the picture there presented to us of Scottish names, manners and costumes. It will hardly be denied that such a Scotch family name as Ursiclos, and such clans as the clan McDouglas and the clan Melville, are sufficiently impossible ; nor can it be... read more »
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The Guermantes Way Marcel Proust
After the relative intimacy of the first two volumes of In Search of Lost Time, Le Côté de Guermantes opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century, as the narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocratic salons. Both a salute to and a... read more »
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Vendetta Marie Corelli
Imagine friends and family believed you were dead from the Cholera- Imagine being buried alive and awakening in your coffin - Now, imagine a frantic escape from the rotting crypt only to discover something worse waiting in store.... Thus begins Marie Corelli's suspense-thriller, Vendetta. Awakening to find he has... read more »
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The Sorrows of Satan Marie Corelli
A Faustian novel and bestseller of its time, focused on Geoffrey, a starving author. The post delivers three letters, the first from a friend who offers to help with an introduction. The second advises him he has inherited money. The third has been written by Lucio, an aristocrat purporting to know the best way to... read more »
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The Song of Roland Dorothy L. Sayers
On 15 August 778, Charlemagne’s army was returning from a successful expedition against Saracen Spain when its rearguard was ambushed in a remote Pyrenean pass. Out of this skirmish arose a stirring tale of war, which was recorded in the oldest extant epic poem in French. The Song of Roland, written by an unknown... read more »
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The History of the Nun Aphra Behn
Behn's remarkable work in which she analyzes the retribution of breaking the vows, particularly the religious vows undertaken by nuns. The tale, claimed to be true, focuses on a nun who was lured by the charms of the world into forsaking the nunnery. Fate comes down hard upon her as she has to face the troubles and... read more »
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The Unfortunate Happy Lady Aphra Behn
A very English rendering of the classic Spanish novel La burlada Aminta y venganza del honor (Mocked Aminta and honor's vengence). Behn's story has a somewhat different beginning and a completely altered ending. Aminta, in her very early teens, becomes a rich orphan of Segovia. Her uncle, following her fathers will... read more »
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The Fortune of the Rougons Émile Zola
The first in Zola's famous Rougon-Macquart series of novels. In it we learn how the two branches of the family came about, and the origins of the hereditary weaknesses passed down the generations. Murder, treachery, and greed are the keynotes, and just as the Empire was established through violence, the "fortune" of... read more »
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The Debacle Émile Zola
Conservative and working-class, Jean Macquart is an experienced, middle-aged soldier in the French army, who has endured deep personal loss. When he first meets the wealthy and mercurial Maurice Levasseur, who never seems to have suffered, his hatred is immediate. But after they are thrown together during the... read more »
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Abbé Mouret's Transgression Émile Zola
Serge Mouret, the younger son of Francois Mouret, is ordained to the priesthood and appointed Cure of Les Artaud, a squalid village in Provence, to whose degenerate inhabitants he ministers. He has inherited the family taint of the Rougon-Macquarts, which in him takes the form of a morbid religious enthusiasm... read more »
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The Fat and the Thin Émile Zola
Florent Quenu, a wrongly accused man who escapes imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Returning to his native Paris, Florent finds a city he barely recognizes, with its working classes displaced to make way for broad boulevards and bourgeois flats. Living with his brother’s family in the newly rebuilt Les Halles... read more »
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His Masterpiece Émile Zola
The Masterpiece is the tragic story of Claude Lantier, an ambitious and talented young artist who has come from the provinces to conquer Paris but is conquered instead by the flaws of his own genius. Set in the 1860s and 1870s, it is the most autobiographical of the twenty novels in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. It... read more »
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The Younger Brother Aphra Behn
Mirtilla, the Amorous Jilt, who had once been attached to George Marteen, the Younger Brother, married for a convenience the clownish Sir Morgan Blunder. Prince Frederick, who had seen and fallen in love with her during a religious ceremony in a Ghent convent, follows her to England. They meet accidentally and she... read more »
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The Flood Émile Zola
Sixty-two-year-old Louis Roubieu sees his family's long-awaited prosperity as a reward rained upon him by God for years of arduous toil on the land. Yet it is the very abundance of God's rain, initially observed from the window of their imposing farmhouse, which comes to pose a dire threat to not merely their... read more »
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The Fair Jilt Aphra Behn
The story of a charming, daring, and determined lady who contemplates even murder to attain her love. It is all in vain, however, and her love transforms later into aggressive hatred. These Orders are taken up by the best Persons of the Town, young Maids of Fortune, who live together, not inclos'd, but in Palaces... read more »
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Doctor Pascal Émile Zola
This final volume in Zola's twenty-book Rougon-Macquart cycle serves in many respects as an epilogue to the series—but it's also a fine tale in its own right. Doctor Pascal, approaching old age, looks back on his life and finds himself asking whether he has made the right choices . . . and the answers he finds... read more »