Topics in Literature

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  A Room of One’s Own

  “But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what has that got to do with a room of one’s own? I…

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  Anna Letitia Barbauld: Selected Poetry and Prose

  At her death in 1825, Anna Letitia Barbauld was considered one of the great writers of her time. Distinguished as a poet and essayist, she…

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  The Clever Woman of the Family

  Charlotte Mary Yonge was one of the most prolific writers of the nineteenth century. Though perhaps best known for her popular children’s books, she also…

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  Desmond

  Desmond is a political novel about the French Revolution. It is Charlotte Smith’s only epistolary work, and it is her most politically radical piece. Written…

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  Letters Written in France

  Helen Maria Williams was a poet, novelist, and radical thinker deeply immersed in the political struggles of the 1790s. Her Letters Written in France is…

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  The Pool in the Desert

  In The Pool in the Desert, first published in 1903, Sara Jeannette Duncan explores the impact of isolation on the small British communities of Victorian…

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  Vathek with The Episodes of Vathek

  William Beckford’s Vathek is a touchstone of eighteenth-century Orientalism and of the Gothic novel. Beckford’s later work, The Episodes of Vathek, shares Vathek’s irreverent and…

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  The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

  Set in early eighteenth-century Scotland, James Hogg’s masterpiece is a brilliant psychological study of religious fanaticism and the power of evil. Led on by his…

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  Joseph Andrews

  Joseph Andrews, first published in 1742, is in part a parody of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. But whereas Richardson’s novel is marked by the virtues of…

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  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…

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  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,…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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…

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  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.…

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  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.

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  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…

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  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…