Literary Criticism
Resurrection
Resurrection is the last of Tolstoy's major fiction works published in his lifetime. Tolstoy intended the novel as an exposition of injustic…
Hunger
Hunger (Norwegian: Sult) is a novel by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun and was published in its final form in 1890. The novel has been hail…
Against The Grain
Against The Grain is a provocative exploration of aestheticism and the complexities of modern existence, penned by Joris-Karl Huysmans. This…
The Perfect Wagnerite
The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring (originally published London, 1898) is a philosophical commentary on Richard Wagne…
The Colonel's Dream
In this novel, Chesnutt described the hopelessness of Reconstruction in a post-Civil War South that was bent on reestablishing the former st…
David Elginbrod
David Elginbrod is a captivating exploration of Scottish country life, woven through the experiences of its titular character, a humble yet …
Ulysses
Ulysses is a groundbreaking novel in which Irish author James Joyce explores realism through stream-of-consciousness technique and shifting …
Anne Severn and the Fieldings
Written in an era of cheap, formulaic romantic fiction, the nuanced, seditious, quietly erotic novels of May Sinclair stand out like literat…
Agnes Grey
The novel tells the story of Agnes Grey, the daughter of a minister, whose family comes to financial ruin. Desperate to earn the money to ca…
The Princess Casamassima
Princess Casamassima can be read on several levels: first, as a political and social novel, exploring the anarchistic and revolutionary unde…
The Story of an Unhappy Friendship
The Story of an Unhappy Friendship offers a unique glimpse into the complex relationship between Robert Sherard and the renowned playwright …
Father Sergius
Prince Stepan Kasatsky experiences a disappointment with his fiancé and decides to become a monk! There is a story line, but beneath …
Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens
“These papers were originally published as prefaces to the separate books of Dickens in one of the most extensive of those cheap libraries o…
An Anonymous Story
In "An Anonymous Story," Chekhov continues to explore his favorite themes of superfluous men, ironic rakes, exploited women, and t…
The Metropolis
In this 1907 novel about the extravagant life of New York City’s high society, the author of The Jungle, presents a portrait of the wealthy …
The Art of Fiction
A lecture on the art of fiction, given by the English critic Walter Besant on April 25, 1884, and an answer to the lecture by American write…
Siddhartha
A major preoccupation of Hesse in writing Siddhartha was to cure his "sickness with life" (Lebenskrankheit) by immersing himself i…
Roderick Hudson
Published as a serial in 1875, Roderick Hudson is James's first important novel. The theme of Americans in Europe, so important in much of J…
Tender Is The Night A Romance
Tender Is the Night: A Romance is a beautiful and poignant novel about marriage, glamour, and disintegration. Regarded by many as F. Scott F…
The Fallen Leaves
Amelius Goldenheart, the hero of this story, is expelled from a Utopian community in New England and finds himself in London. His story is d…