Literary Criticism
Our Mutual Friend
Our Mutual Friend (written in the years 1864–65) is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, …
To The Lighthouse
The Ramsey family, with house guests, visit the Isle of Skye at least twice. The plot is not at all the point though, as this is a book abou…
The Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung, also sometimes translated as The Transformation) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in…
The Rider on the White Horse
Hauke Haien, a young man of 24 years, has just beome dikemaster in Northern Frisia. Against the resistance of many of the townfolk, he has a…
White Rose of Weary Leaf
Isobel Violet Hunt was a British author renowned for her literary salons, which hosted such notables as H.G. Wells, D.H. Laurence, Henry Jam…
Audrey Craven
In May Sinclair’s remarkable first novel, Audrey Craven is a beautiful young woman who has by her idiosyncrasies acquired a thoroughly undes…
The Art of Fiction
A lecture on the art of fiction, given by the English critic Walter Besant on April 25, 1884, and an answer to the lecture by American write…
The Legends of Genesis
The Legends of Genesis is the English translation of the introduction to Gunkel’s massive commentary, Genesis. Gunkel uses form critical ana…
An Anonymous Story
In "An Anonymous Story," Chekhov continues to explore his favorite themes of superfluous men, ironic rakes, exploited women, and t…
Agnes Grey
The novel tells the story of Agnes Grey, the daughter of a minister, whose family comes to financial ruin. Desperate to earn the money to ca…
Robert Browning
There is an old anecdote, probably apocryphal, which describes how a feminine admirer wrote to Browning asking him for the meaning of one of…
The Liar
The Liar by Henry James explores the intricate dynamics of love, deception, and the complexities of human relationships. Set against the bac…
Botchan
Botchan is the story of a young math teacher from Tokyo whose first assignment takes him to a middle school in the country side. His arrival…
Jenny
Jenny Winge is a Norwegian expatriate studying art in Rome, part of a Bohemian group of friends who explore the ancient City in an intoxicat…
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
Fenimore Cooper - author of The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, etc - has often been praised, but just as often been criticised for hi…
Siddhartha
A major preoccupation of Hesse in writing Siddhartha was to cure his "sickness with life" (Lebenskrankheit) by immersing himself i…
The Beast in the Jungle
The Beast in the Jungle is a poignant exploration of fate and the human condition, centered on John Marcher, a man who believes he is destin…
Arrowsmith
This 1926 Pulitzer Prize winning novel centers on the title character, a promising medical student who, as a doctor and following several in…
Tolstoy on Shakespeare
In this thought-provoking essay, Leo Tolstoy presents a critical examination of William Shakespeare's works, exploring the playwright's them…
Ulysses
Ulysses is a groundbreaking novel in which Irish author James Joyce explores realism through stream-of-consciousness technique and shifting …