Literary Criticism
Elective Affinities
Elective Affinities (Die Wahlverwandtschaften) was Goethe's third novel. It depicts human relationships in a Romantic crucible, and is the s…
The Altar of the Dead
A fable of literally life and death significance, the story explores how the protagonist tries to keep the remembrance of his dead friends, …
Lady Susan
Jane Austen demonstrated her mastery of the epistolary novel genre in Lady Susan, which she wrote in 1795 but never published. Although the …
Clayhanger
This first of a trilogy of novels is a coming-of-age story set in the Midlands of Victorian England, following Edwin Clayhanger as he leaves…
The Naturewoman
The Mastersons, a wealthy Bostonian family, await the arrival of their cousin Anna in the wake of her grandfather's death. Though born in Bo…
New Grub Street
"The story deals with the literary world that Gissing himself had experienced. Its title refers to the London street, Grub Street, whic…
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a groundbreaking novel by Laurence Sterne that defies conventional storytelling. Thro…
Nana
Excerpt from Introduction:"Nana" stands third in popularity among the Zola novels. It is a study of the prostitute type and it giv…
Mademoiselle Ixe
This is a story by the English writer Mary Elizabeth Hawker (1848-1908) entitled Mademoiselle Ixe, by[pseudonym] Lanoe Falconer. The manuscr…
Mardi
Mardi is Melville's first purely fictional work. In it he contemplates man's beliefs, and questions whether or not one faith has value over …
The Lost Art of Reading
Gerald Stanley Lee speaks here-in of books and self in the time of factories, tall buildings and industry and big city making, the effects o…
The Wings of the Dove
"The Wings of the Dove," published in 1902, represents to my memory a very old--if I shouldn't perhaps rather say a very young--mo…
The Novels of Jane Austen
An 1859 essay by the prominent philosopher and literary critic, G. H. Lewes, who was an enthusiastic promoter of the novels of Jane Austen a…
Brazilian Tales
"Brazilian Tales" is a collection of six short stories selected by Isaac Goldberg as best representative of the Brazilian Literatu…
Hagar's Daughter
Hagar's Daughter was first published serially in "The Colored American Magazine" in 1901-1902 by Pauline E. Hopkins, a prominent A…
The Death of Society
A weary survivor of the Great War, Major Rane Smith wanders in a great ennui amidst the mystical beauties of the fjords of Norway after the …
Life and Death of Harriett Frean
Harriett Frean is a well-to-do, unmarried woman living a life of meaningless dependency, boredom, and unproductivity as she patiently cares …
The Passionate Friends
H. G. Wells is best known for his science fiction, but some of his greatest works were in other genres. The Passionate Friends is a love sto…
The Flaw in the Crystal
One of May Sinclair’s “uncanny” stories, this novella explores many of Sinclair’s most treasured themes: the bounds of marriage, the conflic…
Old and New Masters
Jane Austen, WB Yeats, Chesterton, Shaw... these are personal and intelligent short essays on a selection of great (and great-ish) writers: …