Set in the fictional town of Casterbridge, «The Mayor of Casterbridge» is Thomas Hardy's tragic story of Michael Henchard who over indulges in alcohol at a county fair and decides to auction off his wife and daughter to a sailor. When he recovers his sobriety Mr. Henchard realizes his mistake but it is too late to get his family back. Devastated he decides not to touch alcohol again for the next twenty-one years. The novel advances eighteen ...
Edith Wharton was an American novelist, poet and short story writer whose works display a mastery over the realistic fiction genre. Although she grew up in a world of refined manners and fashionable people, she was also aware of its superficiality, a theme that frequently appeared in her fiction. She began writing short stories and poetry at a young age, impressing such literary figures as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Dean Howells. Her ...
"The Rise of Silas Lapham" is William Dean Howells 1885 novel which tells the story of its title character, who inherits his father's paint business and subsequently makes a great deal of money. Silas moves his family from rural Vermont to Boston in order to try and improve his social position. The consequences of which are both humorous and tragic. A sharp contrast is drawn between 'new' and 'old' money by William ...
"Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" has been widely banned and censored since its first publication in 1749, and was only made legal to sell in Great Britain and the United States in 1963. Despite this suppression, the novel has survived the test of time and brought notoriety to its author, John Cleland, because of his lush and witty prose style. The story of Fanny Hill, an orphaned teenage girl who takes to prostitution in order t ...
Widely considered to be one of the first true English novels, Fielding's «Tom Jones,» written in 1749, revolves around the life and experiences of an orphaned baby who grows up to be a kind-hearted, if overly vigorous, young man. Tom is brought up by the generous Mr. Allworthy on his Somerset estate, where Tom eventually falls in love with his beautiful neighbor, Sophia Western. Because of his partially unknown parentage, however, their res ...
One of Samuel Butler's most famous works, «Erewhon» is the story of a fictional country in which Butler satirizes the Victorian society of the time in which he lived. An anagram of the word «nowhere,» «Erewhon» upon first impression appears to be a utopian society. However as the country is further detailed is becomes apparent that this is clearly not the case. The titular setting of the novel is loosely based on Butler's experiences a ...
Joseph Conrad's novella «The Duel» regards the story of Lieutenant Gabriel Feraud, a fervent Bonapartist and obsessive duelist. Following a near fatal duel with the nephew of the mayor of Strasborg, Lieutenant Armand d'Hubert is sent to put Feraud under house arrest. This confrontation sets in motion a series of indecisive duels between the two over the course of the next several years. Conrad's «The Duel» is based upon the real l ...
As one of the first writers of detective fiction in America, Anna Katharine Green has been called the «the mother of the detective novel.» A bestselling author who would author almost forty novels, she is noted for introducing the first American series of detective novels. Her first novel, «The Leavenworth Case,» which introduces us to her popular detective Ebenezer Gryce, is a classic whodunit concerning the murder of Horatio Leavenworth, a wea ...
With the publication of «A Sportsman's Sketches» in 1852 Ivan Turgenev established himself one of the leaders in the movement of Russian literary realism. Abandoning the idealized vision of Romantic literature, Realism seeks to present the true struggles of the human existence. In «Virgin Soil», his final novel, we see a continuation of the themes present throughout his other works. At the heart of the novel is the story of a young man and ...
