Topics in Literature
Showing 337–360 of 447 resultsSorted by latest
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Wisdom of the Mythtellers – Second Edition
Mythtelling: the ideas and emotions of the Earth expressed through stories—stories distilled from millennia of treading warily in nature, rather than undertaking to rearrange her…
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Valperga
Originally published in 1823, Valperga is probably Mary Shelley’s most neglected novel. Set in 14th-century Italy, it represents a merging of historical romance and the…
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The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless
Prolific even by eighteenth-century standards, Eliza Haywood was the author of more than eighty titles, including short fiction, novels, periodicals, plays, poetry, and a political…
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Great Expectations
Originally published in serial form from December 1860 to August 1861, Great Expectations is the ‘autobiography’ of Pip, as he transformed from apprentice village blacksmith…
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Aurora Floyd
Aurora Floyd is one of the leading novels in the genre known as ‘sensation fiction’—a tradition in which the key texts include Wilkie Collins’s The…
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
In Oscar Wilde’s famous novel, Dorian Gray is tempted by Henry Wotton to sell his soul in order to hold on to beauty and youth.…
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Dracula
To borrow a phrase used by one of the characters in the novel, Dracula is “nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance.” In her introduction to…
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The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman
The works of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) ranged from the early Thoughts on the Education of Daughters to The Female Reader, a selection of texts for…
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Zofloya
The protagonist of Charlotte Dacre’s best known novel, Zofloya, or the Moor (1806) is unique in women’s Gothic and Romantic literature, and has more in…
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Nostromo
Nostromo, first published in 1904, is arguably Conrad’s greatest and most complex novel. A compelling adventure story, it is also a novel of profound psychological…
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Lodore
Beset by jealousy over an admirer of his wife’s, Lord Lodore has come with his daughter Ethel to the American wilderness; his wife Cornelia, meanwhile,…
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Heart and Science
Wilkie Collins’s later novels are often as concerned with social issues as they are with simple storytelling—but as more and more critics are suggesting, the…
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The Last Man
Mary Shelley’s third published novel, The Last Man, is a disillusioned vision of the end of civilization, set in the twenty-first century. The book offers…
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Something New
“McLeod’s skillful edition includes a thought-provoking compendium of 18th-century views of beauty and ugliness.” — Jennifer Thorn, Duke University To be a heroine is to…
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The Clandestine Marriage
David Garrick, the leading actor of his time, was also one of its most accomplished dramatists, and The Clandestine Marriage is perhaps his finest play.…