British Literature
Showing 193–216 of 423 resultsSorted by latest
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The History of Sandford and Merton
Among the earliest novels written about children, for children, The History of Sandford and Merton was enormously popular for a century and a half after…
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The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest marks a central moment in late-Victorian literature, not only for its wit but also for its role in the shift…
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Under Western Eyes
Joseph Conrad’s last overtly political novel, Under Western Eyes is considered to be one of his greatest works. Set in pre-Revolutionary Russia, the novel tells…
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The Secret Agent
The Secret Agent is set in the seedy world of Adolf Verloc, a storekeeper and double agent in late-Victorian London who pretends to sympathize with…
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Candide
The philosophical problem of evil—that a supposedly good God could allow terrible human suffering—troubled the minds of eighteenth-century thinkers as it troubles us today. Voltaire’s…
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The Man in the Moone
Arguably the first work of science fiction in English, Francis Godwin’s The Man in the Moone was published in 1638, pseudonymously and posthumously. The novel,…
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Selected Poems
One of the leading poets of the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a profound influence on her contemporaries and on writers that followed her.…
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The Basset Table
The Basset Table follows the fortunes of Lady Reveller, who runs a table where her friends play the card game basset, and her struggle to…
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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Anne Brontë’s second and last novel was widely and contentiously reviewed upon its 1848 publication, in part because its subject matter domestic violence, alcoholism, women’s…
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Autobiographical Sketches
Annie Wood Besant (1847-1933) was a problematic and notorious figure in Victorian England, questioning and then breaking from the Anglican Church to become an atheist,…
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Michael Field: The Poet
“Michael Field” was the literary pseudonym of two women, Katharine Bradley (1846-1914) and her niece Edith Cooper (1862-1913). The women were poets, playwrights, diarist, and…
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The Island of Doctor Moreau
A classic of science fiction and a dark meditation on Darwinian thought in the late Victorian period, The Island of Doctor Moreau explores the possibility…
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The Victorian Art of Fiction
The Victorian Art of Fiction presents important Victorian statements on the form and function of fiction. The essays in this anthology address questions of genre,…
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A Companion to Chaucer and his Contemporaries
A Companion to Chaucer and his Contemporaries provides a detailed introduction to medieval culture, broadly considered. This sourcebook gives readers fuller access to Middle English…
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Roxana
Almost three hundred years after its first publication, Roxana continues to challenge readers, who, though compelled by Roxana’s story, are often baffled by her complex…
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Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater remains its author’s most famous and frequently-read work and one of the period’s central statements about both the power and…
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Novel Definitions
Novel Definitions captures the lively critical debate surrounding the invention of the English novel, showing how the rise of the novel was accompanied by a…
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The Diary of a Nobody
The Diary of a Nobody, the spoof diary of Charles Pooter, a London clerk, first appeared as a book in 1892 and has never been…
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The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan
In 1810, the orientalist scholar Charles Stewart translated and published an extraordinary travel narrative written by a Persian-speaking Indian poet and scholar named Mirza Abu…
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The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson
In 1754 the British adventurer, compiler, and novelist Edward Kimber published The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson. Rooted in a tale…
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Euphemia
Charlotte Lennox’s Euphemia, published in 1790 at the end of her professional career, is an extraordinary account of pre-Revolutionary America from a woman’s perspective. Constructed…
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The Excellencies of Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle, one of the most important intellectuals of the seventeenth century, was a gifted experimenter, an exceptionally able philosopher, and a dedicated Christian. In…
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Lyrical Ballads
Long central to the canon of British Romantic literature, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads is a fascinating case study in the history…
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Prisons and Prisoners
Prisons and Prisoners is the autobiography of aristocratic suffragette Constance Lytton. In it, she details her militant actions in the struggle to gain the vote…