Classics (Antiquity)
Alcibiades I
As Jowett relates in his brilliant introduction, 95% of Plato's writing is certain and his reputation rests soundly on this foundation. The …
The Rainbow
Briefly appearing in 1915, then banned and taken out of circulation for its adult treatment of sexuality, Lawrence's visionary novel The Rai…
Protagoras
Jowett, in his always informative introduction, sees this dialogue as transitional between the early and middle dialogues. Socrates meets wi…
Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral …
The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight
The Princess Priscilla of Lothen Kunitz finds court life stifling and runs away to England with the elderly court librarian. Her intention i…
The Red Badge of Courage
There comes a time in the course of battle when a participant casts his fate to the gods of war, and carries on without question, the task a…
Shirley
Shirley is an 1849 social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Brontë. It was Brontë's second published novel after Jane Eyre (…
Washington Square
Washington Square is a short novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Ma…
The Ambassadors
Henry James considered The Ambassadors his best, or perhaps his best-wrought, novel. It plays on the great Jamesian theme of the American ab…
What Katy Did Next
This is the third book of the famous "What Katy did" series. (Summary by Elli)
Oliver Twist
When orphaned Oliver Twist asks for more food, the workhouse board are horrified and immediately pack him off to work for an undertaker, who…
Ten Books on Architecture
On Architecture is a treatise on architecture written by the Roman architect Vitruvius and dedicated to his patron, the emperor Caesar Augus…
The Clouds
Strepsiades is an Athenian burdened with debt from a bad marriage and a spendthrift son. He resolves to go to the Thinking Shop, where he c…
The Pickwick Papers
Mr Pickwick, founder of the Pickwick Club, sets out with his three friends, Tupman, Snodgrass, and Winkle, to observe the world. They inten…
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…
Villette
After an unspecified family disaster, protagonist Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school where…
Far from the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and offers in ample measure the details of English rural life that Hardy so…
Summer
The story is one of only two novels by Wharton to be set in New England. The novel details the sexual awakening of its protagonist, Charity …
Phaedrus
“For there is no light of justice or temperance, or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls, in the earthly copies of them: they…
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…