Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one of the most renowned British novelists of all time, known popularly as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. He began writing in order to supplement his income while studying medicine at Edinburgh University, but attained instant popularity with his incredible detective fiction. After completing his medical degree in 1881, he set out on a whaling cruise to Africa, where he found inspiration and material for his 1898 novel ...
Though written at the beginning of the Romantic era, this remarkable French historical romance takes place in medieval Paris at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. It is there that the deformed Quasimodo has gone deaf ringing the grand church's bells for his adoptive father Dom Claude Frollo. The severe priest, though he looks after the grotesque Quasimodo, ignores the public persecution that the man suffers whenever he leaves the Cathedral, and i ...
Begun while John Bunyan was in Bedfordshire county jail serving time for holding religious services outside the auspices of the Church of England, Pilgrim's Progress is considered one of the greatest works of the English language. «Pilgrim's Progress» is a Christian allegory that concerns the path of one's soul to Heaven. John Bunyan published the first part of the «Pilgrim's Progress» in 1678 with a second part to follow in ...
Widely considered one of Dickens most superb and complete novels, «Bleak House» has a complex plot that contains one of his most elaborate attacks on a flaw of society: the chancery system. The kind John Jarndyce is tied up in litigation that only his wards Richard and Ada care to discuss. He then becomes guardian of Esther, an orphaned young woman who comprises a part of the experimental narration of the novel. A series of events take the vast ...
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English literary and social critic, historian, playwright, poet, Catholic theologian, debater, mystery writer and foremost, a novelist. Among the primary achievements of Chesterton's extensive writing career are the wide range of subjects written about, the large number of genres employed, and the sheer volume of publications produced. He wrote several plays, around 80 books, several hundred poems ...
"Babbitt" is the 1922 novel by Sinclair Lewis that tells the story of George F. Babbitt, a middle-aged partner, with his father-in-law, in a real-estate firm. Babbitt is married with three kids and a successful middle-aged businessman living in a common midwestern town, yet he is unhappy. He is a man unaware of the contemporary social and economic conditions that exist outside his own small circle. Eventually this lack of awareness begins t ...
Considered one of the first mystery novels, «The Woman in White» is Wilkie Collins's epistolary novel that tells the tale of Walter Hartright, who encounters a woman all dressed in white on a moonlit road in Hampstead. Hartright helps the woman to find her way back to London. The woman warns him against an unnamed baronet and when they part he discovers that she may have escaped from an asylum. Hartright travels to Cumberland where he takes ...
Charles Dickens' «A Christmas Carol» is one of the classic heart warming Christmas stories that have delighted readers for decades. «A Christmas Carol» is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a cold and bitter miser who despises Christmas and everything about it. When the ghost of his old partner Jacob Marley and then three additional ghosts visit him on Christmas Eve he finally learns of the true spirit of Christmas. ...
In this sequel to Jerome K. Jerome's most famous work «Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)» we have a reunion of the three companions from the first book, minus the dog, who are setting out on a bicycle tour through the Black Forest of Germany. Written near the end of the Victorian bicycle craze in which bicycles became a common fixture amongst the middle-class for recreational purposes, «Three Men on the Bummel» is a masterfull ...
