Literary Criticism
Benito Cereno
On an island off the coast of Chile, Captain Amaso Delano, sailing an American sealer, sees the San Dominick, a Spanish slave ship, in obvio…
The American
One of James’s early novels, The American plunges right in to one of the writer’s most enduring subjects, that of the innocent, or at least …
Ethan Frome
Ethan Frome is a poignant exploration of unfulfilled dreams and the harsh realities of life in a small New England town. Set in the fictiona…
The Enchanted April
It’s a dreary February in post-World War I London when Mrs. Wilkins spots an advertisement in The Times for a small Italian castle for rent …
Simon the Jester
Simon de Gex, a wealthy and successful MP, is diagnosed with a terminal illness and decides to use his last few months using his wealth and …
The Beautiful and Damned
The Beautiful and Damned explores the lives of Anthony Patch and his wife, Gloria, as they navigate the opulent yet tumultuous world of 1920…
The Doctor's Wife
This is one of the Victorian “Sensationist” Mary Elizabeth Braddon's many novels (best known among them: “Lady Audley’s Secret”). It is extr…
The Claverings
"I consider the story as a whole to he good, though I am not aware that the public ever corroborated that verdict." - the author T…
Bartleby the Scrivener
Bartleby the Scrivener is a thought-provoking short story set against the backdrop of Wall Street, exploring themes of isolation, conformity…
Ball of Fat
Ball of Fat is a poignant short story by renowned French author Guy de Maupassant, set against the backdrop of the Franco-Prussian War. The …
Agnes Grey
Agnes Grey is a poignant exploration of the struggles faced by a young governess in 19th-century England. Anne Brontë draws from her ow…
The House of the Dead
The House of the Dead is a novel published in 1861 by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which portrays the life of convicts in a Siberian p…
Resurrection
Resurrection is the last of Tolstoy's major fiction works published in his lifetime. Tolstoy intended the novel as an exposition of injustic…
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells …
The Fruit of the Tree
The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton explores the intricate lives of a wealthy mill owner and her socially progressive husband as they nav…
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Clearly frustrated at the refusal of his contemporaries to recognise the iniquity of society, Tressell's cast of hypocritical Christians, ex…
Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis’ George F. Babbitt is a complicated and conflicted character. When you think you have his next move figured out he surprises …
Father Goriot
Father Goriot (Le Père Goriot), published in 1835, is widely considered to be Balzac's finest and most popular novel. It is set in Pa…
The Beautiful and Damned
This 1922 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicles the life of Anthony Patch, the only heir of millionaire Adam Patch, his grandfather. Antho…
Septimus
The book concerns the tangled lives of four people: Zora, a young widow who seeks some purpose in her life; Septimus Dix, an other-wordly bu…