Literary Criticism
The Portrait of a Lady
The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880-1881 …
The Figure in the Carpet
The story ostensibly concerns a young literary critics who greatly admires the writer Hugh Vereker. A meeting with Vereker, however, shows h…
Bunyan Characters
Bunyan Characters by Alexander Whyte delves into the rich tapestry of characters from John Bunyan's renowned works, particularly focusing on…
The Awkward Age
Nanda Brookenham is coming of age, and thus 'coming out' in London society - which leads to complications in her family's social set in Lond…
The Reverberator
Another Jamesian look at Americans in Paris. What happens when a reporter for an American scandal sheet (The Reverberator) is looking for a …
Childhood
Childhood is the first published novel by Leo Tolstoy, released under the initials L. N. in the November 1852 issue of the popular Russian l…
Gone to Earth
"Gone to Earth" is the cry of fox hunters as the fox takes to its den and they lose the chase. Here, Mary Webb tells the story of …
Three Years
Laptev, the rich but unattractive scion of a merchant, renounces his independent-minded, intelligent, devoted, but equally unattractive mist…
Heart of Darkness
Set in a time of oppressive colonisation, when large areas of the world were still unknown to Europe, and Africa was literally on maps and m…
The Double: A Petersburg Poem
In this classic novella, the life of a drab office clerk named Golyadkin begins to be haunted by his "doppelgänger," a man id…
The New Machiavelli
About a political idealist who changes his colours and engages in a sexual adventure, this novel by H.G. Wells generated controversy when it…
The Coast of Bohemia
William Dean Howells is at his iconoclastic best in this exploration of bourgeois values, particularly in the clash between respectable soci…
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
This is Mark Twain's vicious and amusing review of Fenimore Cooper's literary art. It is still read widely in academic circles. Twain's essa…
An Essay on Criticism
An Essay on Criticism is a foundational work of literary criticism by Alexander Pope, blending poetry and philosophical reflection. Written …
The Emperor of Portugallia
Selma Lagerlöf was born in Vaermland, Sweden, in 1858 and enjoyed a long and very successful career as a writer, receiving the Nobel-Pr…
Jude the Obscure
Jude the Obscure is the last of Thomas Hardy's novels, begun as a magazine serial and first published in book form in 1895. Its hero Jude Fa…
The Chaperon
What on earth is a girl to do when London society has convicted her mother of a dreadful sin and has ostracized her? If blood is thicker tha…
The Duel
Known for his plays and short stories, Anton Chekhov also wrote a series of novellas, astonishing for their psychological complexity and com…
Siddhartha
A major preoccupation of Hesse in writing Siddhartha was to cure his "sickness with life" (Lebenskrankheit) by immersing himself i…
The Quintessence of Ibsenism
George Bernard Shaw, a playwright with a few bones to pick of his own, undertakes a surgical analysis of the social philosophies underlying …