First published in 1722, Daniel Defoe’s “Moll Flanders” is the classic and tragic morality tale of its title character. Based in part on the true story of a female criminal that Defoe met in Newgate Prison, Moll Flanders is the daughter of a convict and is driven by a singular ambition, to raise her station in life, by any means necessary. In the process of trying to lift herself out of squalor and become a lady she is married several times, aba ...
“The Return of the Soldier” is British author Rebecca West’s remarkable 1918 novel of the struggle of a World War I veteran and the three women who love him as he returns home and tries make sense of the life that he had before he went to war. Told from the perspective of his cousin Jenny, who lives with him and his wife Kitty, it is the story of British soldier Chris Baldry, who has just returned home from fighting in France. Chris has amnesia ...
Born and raised in a Longford, Ireland workhouse, Padraic Colum left home at seventeen to become a clerk in the Irish Railway Clearing House in Dublin. This venture was short-lived, however, and with the success of a few poems and a play, “The Saxon Shillin’,” in 1904 he went on to pursue a career in writing. His success as a dramatist, poet, novelist, essayist, biographer, children’s writer, and editor, as well as his participation in the found ...
Considered by many to be one of the greatest adventure novels of all time, “The Thirty-Nine Steps” is Scottish author John Buchan’s most successful work. Published in 1915 and set during the early days of the First World War, it is the first of Buchan’s stories of Richard Hannay, a brave and honorable yet unremarkable gentleman, who finds himself mixed up in extraordinary circumstances. In “The Thirty-Nine Steps” Hannay is unintentionally drawn ...
Widely considered to be one of the first 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 respective gu ...
Published in 1875 after appearing in serial form, “The Way We Live Now” is widely acknowledged to be the masterpiece of Anthony Trollope’s prolific Victorian career. The novel is a scathing satire which Trollope wrote upon returning to England after traveling abroad. Trollope was horrified to discover how pervasive greed and dishonesty had become in England during his absence. In seeking to reveal the deceit and dissipation he found, Trollope sp ...
First published in 1841, “The Deerslayer” was the last of James Fenimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking Tales” to be written. Chronologically set first the novel introduces the reader to the hero of the series, the young frontiersmen Natty Bumppo. In this prequel to the later “Leatherstocking Tales,” Natty, the “Deerslayer”, is at Otsego Lake in central, upstate New York, during the years 1740-1745, a time in which the French and Indian Wars were beg ...
First published in 1860, George Eliot’s “The Mill on the Floss” tells the story of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, a brother and sister growing up on the fictional river Floss near the village of St. Oggs in Lincolnshire, England. Set in the early 1800s over a period of several years, the novel follows the two main characters from childhood to young adulthood. Maggie and Tom’s love and loyalty to each other is the primary relationship of the novel, as ...
First published in 1903 in serial form, Henry James’ “The Ambassadors” is the story of the middle-aged and naive Lewis Lambert Strether, who travels to Europe at the behest of his widowed fiancee to find her supposedly wayward son, Chad Newsome. Mrs. Newsome fears he has fallen under the spell of a sinful woman and Strether must rescue him. With the intent of bringing Chad back to America and to his post at the family business, Strether encounte ...
