Topics in Literature

  • Sense and Sensibility

    Sense and Sensibility

    Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, is a witty satire of the sentimental novel, a popular genre in Britain throughout the 1790s and…

  • David Copperfield

    David Copperfield

    In a preface to this novel, Dickens described David Copperfield as his “favorite child,” and the story has remained among the favorites of Dickens’ readers,…

  • The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

    The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

    The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was a key work of nineteenth-century slave narrative autobiography. Written and published by Equiano, a former…

  • Plays on the Passions

    Plays on the Passions

    Baillie’s eminently readable dramas stand at the crossroads of the Scottish Enlightenment and early Romanticism, and compellingly engage with questions of women’s rights. Her exploration…

  • Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

    Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

    William Godwin’s memoir of his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, marks a transition in Godwin’s philosophical development from extreme rationalism to the recognition of the moral importance…

  • The Time Machine

    The Time Machine

    Wells was interested in the implications of evolutionary theory on the future of human beings at the biological, sociological, and cultural levels, and The Time…

  • The Tragedy of Mariam

    The Tragedy of Mariam

    First published in 1613, The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is probably the first play in English known to have been authored…

  • Lord Jim

    Lord Jim

    One of Joseph Conrad’s greatest novels, Lord Jim brilliantly combines adventure and analysis. Haunted by the memory of a moment of lost nerve during a…

  • Aleta Dey

    Aleta Dey

    Francis Marion Beynon’s autobiographical novel Aleta Dey is increasingly recognised as a small classic of early twentieth-century fiction. Beynon was a journalist and feminist much…

  • Caleb Williams

    Caleb Williams

    William Godwin was one of the most popular novelists of the Romantic era; P.B. Shelley praised him, Byron drew heavily on his narrative style, and…

  • Evelina

    Evelina

    The reputation of Frances Burney (1752-1840) was largely established with her first novel, Evelina. Published anonymously in 1778, it is an epistolary account of a…

  • East Lynne

    East Lynne

    Lady Isabel Carlyle, a beautiful and refined young woman, leaves her hard-working but neglectful lawyer-husband and her infant children to elope with an aristocratic suitor.…

  • The Subjection of Women

    The Subjection of Women

    This volume of The Subjection of Women provides a reliable text in an inexpensive edition, with explanatory notes but no additional editorial apparatus.

  • Paper Bodies

    Paper Bodies

    Margaret Cavendish was one of the most subversive and entertaining writers of the seventeenth century. She invented new genres, challenged gender roles, and critiqued the…

  • Mary Robinson: Selected Poems

    Mary Robinson: Selected Poems

    Mary Robinson’s work has begun again to assume a central place in discussions of Romanticism. A writer of the 1790’s—a decade which saw the birth…

  • Jude the Obscure

    Jude the Obscure

    When Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure appeared in 1895, it immediately caused scandal and controversy. Its frank treatment of Jude’s sexual relationships with Arabella and…

  • Ormond

    Ormond

    Brown is often called the first American novelist. Originally published in 1799, Ormond was inspired by enlightenment philosophers and Gothic writers. The novel engages with…

  • The Moonstone

    The Moonstone

    Intrigue, investigations, thievery, drugs and murder all make an appearance in Collins’s classic who-done-it, The Moonstone. Published in serial form in 1868, it was inspired…

  • On Liberty - Ed. Alexander

    On Liberty – Ed. Alexander

    Mill predicted that “[t]he Liberty is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have written … because the conjunction of [Harriet Taylor’s] mind…

  • The Adventures of Eovaai

    The Adventures of Eovaai

    Haywood’s novel is the story of the beautiful Princess Eovaai. Groomed for the throne by her father, who teaches her Lockean notions of liberty, she…

  • Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah

    Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah

    In Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, Elizabeth Hamilton engages directly with the major issues of her day, from colonialism and the “New…

  • The Rover - Second Edition

    The Rover – Second Edition

    Increasingly Aphra Behn—the first woman professional writer—is also regarded as one of the most important writers of the 17th century. The Rover, her most famous…

  • Secresy - Second Edition

    Secresy – Second Edition

    Secresy was Eliza Fenwick’s only work for adults—a fact that may help to explain why this extraordinary novel has been so thoroughly overlooked. On one…

  • The Victim of Prejudice - Second Edition
    Coming Soon

    The Victim of Prejudice – Second Edition

    Mary Hays was an outspoken Radical intellectual in the turbulent decade of the 1790’s. She argued vehemently for the need to recognise the moral and…