Literary Criticism
The Reverberator
Another Jamesian look at Americans in Paris. What happens when a reporter for an American scandal sheet (The Reverberator) is looking for a …
The Awkward Age
Nanda Brookenham is coming of age, and thus 'coming out' in London society - which leads to complications in her family's social set in Lond…
The Duel
Known for his plays and short stories, Anton Chekhov also wrote a series of novellas, astonishing for their psychological complexity and com…
Chance
Apparently a two part story about a Damsel and a Knight, perhaps a damsel who depends upon the kindness of strangers. It was originally enti…
The Emperor of Portugallia
Selma Lagerlöf was born in Vaermland, Sweden, in 1858 and enjoyed a long and very successful career as a writer, receiving the Nobel-Pr…
The Cossacks
The Cossacks (1863) is an unfinished novel which describes the Cossack life and people through a story of Dmitri Olenin, a Russian aristocra…
Main Street
Carol Milford is a liberal, free-spirited young woman, reared in the metropolis of Minneapolis. She marries Will Kennicott, a doctor, who is…
Hunger
Hunger (Norwegian: Sult) is a novel by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun and was published in its final form in 1890. The novel has been hail…
Father Goriot
One of Balzac's most popular works, set around 1815 during the re-ascendancy of the Bourbon kings following the defeat of Napoleon. Said to …
Anna of the Five Towns
The plot centers on Anna Tellwright, daughter of a wealthy but miserly and dictatorial father, living in the Potteries area of Staffordshire…
The Bostonians
This bittersweet tragicomedy centers on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political conservative from Mississippi; Olive Chance…
Curiosities of Literature
This is the second volume of the collected Curiosities of Literature by Isaac D'Israeli. As in volume one, D'Isreali again takes us on a tou…
The Burning Secret
A lonely, convalescing 12 year-old boy and his attractive mother, who is in a loveless marriage, meet a gentleman while vacationing at a Eur…
Childhood
Childhood is the first published novel by Leo Tolstoy, released under the initials L. N. in the November 1852 issue of the popular Russian l…
Youth
Youth is the third installment in Leo Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy, following Childhood and Boyhood. In this reflective narrative, Tol…
A Hero of Our Time
One of the iconic characters of all Russian literature, Grigori Aleksandrovich Pechorin is the ultimate “superfluous man.” An aristocratic r…
Olive
Inspired by Jane Eyre, Dinah Maria Craik's 1850 novel, Olive, was one of the first to feature a disabled central character. 'Slightly deform…
The Autobiography of Goethe
This Autobiography of Goethe has a lengthy introduction and short biography of Goethe's life by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) and was translate…
Bel Ami
“He had faith in his good fortune, in that power of attraction which he felt within him - a power so irresistible that all women yielded to …
In the Cage
In the Cage is a novella by Henry James, first published as a book in 1898. This long story centers on an unnamed London telegraphist. She d…