Literary Criticism
The Awakening
Kate Chopin's 1899 novella The Awakening is about the personal, sexual, and artistic awakening of a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier. …
The Regent
'The Regent' is, if not a sequel to 'The Card', then a 'Further Adventures of' the eponymous hero of that novel.Denry Machin is now forty-th…
The Moon and Sixpence
This Maugham novel is based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin. The story is told by the narrator as he gradually comes to know the mai…
Don Quixote
Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered the mo…
Siddhartha
Siddhartha is one of the great philosophical novels. Profoundly insightful, it is also a beautifully written story that begins as Siddhartha…
The Warden
The Warden is the first novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire", making fun of the Church of E…
The Golden Calf
A late 19th Century sensation novel following the young life of Ida Palliser as she searches for fortune and love within England's Gentry Cl…
Hard Times
Hard Times was Dickens's shortest novel and the only one to be set in the industrial north of England. A fast moving story with a typical ca…
Clayhanger
A coming-of-age story about Edwin Clayhanger, who leaves school, has his ambition to become an architect thwarted by his tyrannical father, …
Candide
Candide is a relentless, brutal assault on government, society, religion, education, and, above all, optimism. Dr. Pangloss teaches his youn…
Bleak House
Bleak house is one of Dickens finest achievements. It was written for serialisation in 1853 when Dickens was at the peak of his career. Mont…
The Greater Inclination
This is Edith Wharton's earliest published collection of short stories (1899). Like much of her later work, they touch on themes of marriag…
The Touchstone
Stephen Glennard's career is falling apart and he desperately needs money so that he may marry his beautiful fiancee. He happens upon an adv…
Jude the Obscure
Eleven-year-old Jude Fawley, inspired by his teacher Mr. Phillotson, who leaves Marygreen for Christminster to take a university degree, dec…
Short Stories
This is a collection of short stories written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Dostoevsky), who is arguably better-known for his lengthy, contemplativ…
The American
One of James’s early novels, The American plunges right in to one of the writer’s most enduring subjects, that of the innocent, or at least …
Dubliners
Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle cl…
Cousin Betty
Cousin Betty (La Cousine Bette), published in serial format in 1846, was one of the last and greatest of Balzac's works. It was part of his …
Crome Yellow
Crome Yellow, published in 1921 was Aldous Huxley’s first novel. In it he satirizes the fads and fashions of the time. It is the witty story…
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce’s semi-autobiographical first novel. It traces the early life of Stephen Dedalus and his in…