Literary Criticism
Robert Falconer
Robert Falconer follows the journey of a young man whose life is shaped by the love of music and the struggles of faith. Set against the bac…
Growth of the Soil
Growth of the Soil (Markens Grøde) is the novel by Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun which won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. …
Ward No. 6
The line between sanity and insanity is blurred in this classic novella by Anton Chekhov. The disillusioned idealist Dr. Rabin is in charge…
Voltaire and the French Enlightenment
In this Little Blue Book Number 512, Will Durant describes François-Marie Arouet, the writer, historian, and philosopher known as Vol…
Quicksand
Quicksand is a 1928 novel by Nella Larsen, a writer of the Harlem Renaissance. It focuses on Helga Crane, a mixed-race woman who is a school…
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann’s epic novel depicts a decaying, corrupted European society on the eve of the First World War. Set in a luxurious sanatorium hig…
Stalky & Co.
Rudyard Kipling published Stalky & Co. in 1899. Set at an English boarding school in a seaside town on the North Devon coast. (The town,…
This Side of Paradise
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1920, and taking its title from a line of the Rupert Brooke po…
The Woman Who Did
Most times, especially in the time when this book was written (1895), it is just as nature and society would wish: a man and woman "fal…
To Let
‘The Forsyte Saga’ is the story of a wealthy London family stretching from the eighteen-eighties until the nineteen-twenties.To Let is the t…
Their Yesterdays
Their Yesterdays by Harold Bell Wright invites listeners into a reflective journey through the essence of human experience. This novel follo…
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…
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories showcases Mark Twain's profound exploration of human nature and morality through a collection of t…
Nostromo
In Nostromo, Joseph Conrad has transformed an apocryphal anecdote about a sailor who got away with stealing a boat loaded with silver into a…
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…
The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter
Set against the backdrop of 17th century Europe, The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter weaves a poignant narrative that explores the intersect…
The Hidden Places
Hollister, returning home from the war physically scarred but otherwise healthy and intact, finds life difficult among society, and so choos…
Cousin Pons
Cousin Pons is one of the final works in Balzac's long novel series titled The Human Comedy. It was published in 1847, along with Cousin Bet…
Death in Venice
Thomas Mann, author of Death in Venice (German: Der Tod in Venedig) was a winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. The main character in th…
The Absentee
Published in 1812, “The Absentee” by Maria Edgeworth examines social injustice in 19th-century Britain. At that time, the management of man…