During a boat trip up the Isis River with Reverend Robinson Duckworth and the three young daughters of Henry Liddell, one of whom is named Alice, Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, invents a story about a bored little girl named Alice who goes looking for an adventure. Several years later this tale would be forever immortalized as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The story begins with Alice idly passing away the time nex ...
Jane Austen’s first published novel, “Sense and Sensibility” is the classic coming of age story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, who have contrasting temperaments. On the surface Elinor, the older sister represents sense, or reason, while Marianne represents sensibility, or emotion; however upon closer examination we find that they both exhibit varying aspects of each characteristic. Set in southwest England, in the towns of London ...
Begun as an ambitious project by the versatile English courtier, diplomat, philosopher, and author Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century, “The Canterbury Tales” follows a group of people on their pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Saint Thomas a Becket. The Prologue introduces all of the pilgrims in great detail, and through these descriptions Chaucer provides the entire spectrum of social classes and professions of his time. When the group stops at ...
First published serially in 1897, H. G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds,” is one of the author’s most popular and enduring works. When explosions are observed on Mars at an astronomical observatory the interest of the scientific community is greatly aroused. It is soon discovered, when they land on Earth, that the explosions are rocket like projectiles that have been launched from Mars. An unnamed protagonist is one of the first to discover that ...
First published in 1850, “The Scarlet Letter” is the work that would establish Nathaniel Hawthorne’s literary legacy. It is the story of Hester Prynne, a young attractive woman who has been convicted of the crime of adultery and has been sentenced to wear a scarlet letter “A” sewn to her dress. As the result of the affair, Hester has a child named Pearl and because the man with whom she has committed this act refuses to come forward she finds he ...
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 it is ...
First published in 1873, “Around the World in Eighty Days” is a classic tale of adventure by French author Jules Verne, which tells the story of eccentric English inventor Phileas Fogg and his newly employed French valet Passepartout as they set out to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. When Fogg gets into an argument at the Reform Club over an article in “The Daily Telegraph,” which posits that the building of a new railway section in Ind ...
First published serially in 1868, Wilkie Collins’s “The Moonstone” is generally considered as the first full length detective novel in the English language. The novel concerns a large valuable diamond plundered from India by Colonel Herncastle during the Siege of Seringapatam. Herncastle, who has been shunned by his own family, decides to bequeath the diamond to his niece Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. At her birthday party, Rachel ...
Considered one of the greatest novels ever written, “War and Peace” masterfully captures an intimate view of humanity on an epic scale. In this sweeping narrative, Tolstoy utilizes a large cast of characters to brilliantly depict the impact of war on society. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the novel centers its story on five aristocratic Russian families. These characters, particularly Count Pyotr Kirillovich (Pierre) Bezukhov, Prince Andrey Ni ...
