British Literature

  • The Mill on the Floss

    The Mill on the Floss

    This classic novel, first published in 1860, tells the story of Maggie Tulliver. Intelligent and headstrong but trapped by the conventions of family tradition and…

  • Doctor Faustus - Second Edition

    Doctor Faustus – Second Edition

    Doctor Faustus is a classic; its imaginative boldness and vertiginous ironies have fascinated readers and playgoers alike. But the fact that this play exists in…

  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Second Edition

    Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Second Edition

    This classic novel tells the story of how the poor rural couple John and Joan Durbeyfield become convinced that they are descended from the ancient…

  • Autobiography

    Autobiography

    Harriet Martineau lived an extraordinary literary life. She became a reviewer and journalist in the 1820s when her family’s fortune collapsed; published a best-selling series,…

  • The Memoir of 1603 and the Diary of 1616-1619

    The Memoir of 1603 and the Diary of 1616-1619

    Anne Clifford’s memoir for the year 1603 and her diary of 1616-1619 are invaluable records of the daily life and social and family relationships of…

  • The Alexandreis

    The Alexandreis

    Walter of Châtillon’s Latin epic on the life of Alexander the Great was a twelfth- and thirteenth-century “best-seller:” scribes produced over two hundred manuscripts. The…

  • The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Volume 6: The Twentieth Century and Beyond

    The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Volume 6: The Twentieth Century and Beyond

    In all six of its volumes The Broadview Anthology of British Literature presents British literature in a truly distinctive light. Fully grounded in sound literary…

  • The Keepsake for 1829

    The Keepsake for 1829

    Literary annuals played a major role in the popular culture of nineteenth-century Britain and America, and The Keepsake was the most distinguished, successful, and enduring…

  • The Woman in White

    The Woman in White

    As the inscription on his tombstone reveals, Wilkie Collins wanted to be remembered as the “author of The Woman in White,” for it was this…

  • Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales

    Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales

    Vernon Lee writes in the Preface to Hauntings, “My ghosts are what you call spurious ghosts... of whom I can affirm only one thing, that…

  • Reuben Sachs

    Reuben Sachs

    Oscar Wilde wrote of this novel, “Its directness, its uncompromising truths, its depth of feeling, and above all, its absence of any single superfluous word,…

  • The Romance of a Shop

    The Romance of a Shop

    The Romance of a Shop is an early “New Woman” novel about four sisters, who decide to establish their own photography business and their own…

  • St. Leon

    St. Leon

    Set in Europe during the Protestant Reformation and first published in 1799, St. Leon tells the story of an impoverished aristocrat who obtains the philosopher’s…

  • Modern Tragedy

    Modern Tragedy

    Modern Tragedy, first published in 1966, is a study of the ideas and ideologies which have influenced the production and analysis of tragedy. Williams sees…

  • She

    She

    First published in 1886–87, H. Rider Haggard’s imperial romance follows its English heroes from the quiet rooms of Cambridge to the uncharted interior of Africa…

  • The Hound of the Baskervilles

    The Hound of the Baskervilles

    The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–02) is Arthur Conan Doyle’s most celebrated Sherlock Holmes adventure. At the end of the yew tree path of his…

  • The Distaff Gospels

    The Distaff Gospels

    The Distaff Gospels (Les Évangiles des Quenouilles), a fascinating fifteenth-century collection of more than 250 popular beliefs, constitutes a kind of encyclopedia of late medieval…

  • The Girl Behind the Keys

    The Girl Behind the Keys

    “As the door was thrust open, I heard, as in a dream, the voice of Neal Larrard—calm and cool as ever—dictating to me; mechanically, my…

  • Villette

    Villette

    Charlotte Brontë’s contemporary George Eliot wrote of Villette, “There is something almost preternatural in its power.” The deceptive stillness and security of a girls’ school…

  • The Idea of Being Free

    The Idea of Being Free

    Mary Hays (1759-1843) is often best remembered for her early revolutionary novels The Memoirs of Emma Courtney and The Victim of Prejudice. In this collection,…

  • Eikon Basilike

    Eikon Basilike

    Published just after the execution of King Charles I in 1649, Eikon Basilike is a defence of the king’s motivations and actions prior to and…

  • John Halifax, Gentleman

    John Halifax, Gentleman

    This 1856 novel, one of the most beloved of the Victorian period, follows the life, from childhood to death, of an orphaned boy who grows…

  • Shakespeare's Heroines

    Shakespeare’s Heroines

    First published in 1832, Shakespeare’s Heroines is a unique hybrid of Shakespeare criticism, women’s rights activism, and conduct literature. Jameson’s collection of readings of female…

  • The Governess

    The Governess

    Published in 1749, the story of Mrs. Teachum and the nine pupils who make up her “little female academy” is widely recognized as the first…