Literary Criticism
Oliver Twist
"Please sir, I want some more," the famous line spoken by Oliver Twist at age nine, becomes the tipping point of a huge change in …
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Irritated and drunken, an itinerant farm-worker sells his wife and child to a stranger. Thus begins The Mayor of Casterbridge, set in rural …
The Awakening
Kate Chopin's 1899 novella The Awakening is about the personal, sexual, and artistic awakening of a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier. …
The Man in the Iron Mask
In this, the last of the Three Musketeers novels, Dumas builds on the true story of a mysterious prisoner held incognito in the French penal…
The Glory of Clementina Wing
The book follows the adventures of two main characters - Clementina Wing, a talented artist in her mid 30's with no social graces and Ephrai…
Bleak House
Bleak house is one of Dickens finest achievements. It was written for serialisation in 1853 when Dickens was at the peak of his career. Mont…
The Jungle
It is the end of the 19th century. Like thousands of others, the Rudkus family has emigrated from Lithuania to America in search of a better…
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood…
Master and Man
A land owner, Vasili Andreevich, takes along one of his peasants, Nikita, for a short journey to another town. He wishes to get to the town …
Dubliners
Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle cl…
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…
Fathers and Sons
The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazaro…
Mrs. Dalloway
Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Join her and a web of connections in exploring London, their memories and their innermost thoughts and …
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…
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 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…
The Warden
The Warden is the first novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire", making fun of the Church of E…
The Touchstone
Stephen Glennard's career is falling apart and he desperately needs money so that he may marry his beautiful fiancee. He happens upon an adv…
The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
Marcus Ordeyne is a middle aged bachelor schoolmaster who has inherited both money and a title and thus is able to lead a life of leisure. O…
Jude the Obscure
Eleven-year-old Jude Fawley, inspired by his teacher Mr. Phillotson, who leaves Marygreen for Christminster to take a university degree, dec…