Topics in Literature

  • The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations

    The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations

    First published in the height of the “yellow nineties” and in the shadow of the Oscar Wilde trials, Arthur Machen’s The Three Impostors (1895) remains…

  • The Medieval Bestiary in English

    The Medieval Bestiary in English

    First written in Egypt between the second and fourth centuries, the Physiologus brought together poetic descriptions of animals and their Christian allegories. As the Physiologus…

  • Jane Eyre - Second Edition

    Jane Eyre – Second Edition

    Jane Eyre, the story of a young girl and her passage into adulthood, was an immediate commercial success at the time of its original publication…

  • The Uninhabited House

    The Uninhabited House

    Charlotte Riddell’s The Uninhabited House (1875) tells the story of River Hall and the secrets that are hidden behind its doors. Within this haunted house,…

  • Branded

    Branded

    When Branded: A Diary was published in Berlin in 1920, Emmy Hennings was called the most important woman writer of her day. Her autobiographical novel…

  • Trojan Women

    Trojan Women

    Trojan Women tells the story of the survivors of the Trojan War, the women and children taken into slavery by the victorious Greek army. Through…

  • Githa Sowerby: Three Plays

    Githa Sowerby: Three Plays

    Githa Sowerby’s Rutherford and Son took the London theatre by storm in 1912. Following its triumphant run, the play toured to New York, was produced…

  • The Red Laugh and The Abyss

    The Red Laugh and The Abyss

    Leonid Andreyev’s The Red Laugh is an experimental depiction of war and its psychological effects, both on those who participate in the fighting and on…

  • Hagar’s Daughter

    Hagar’s Daughter

    Hagar’s Daughter is Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’s first serial novel, published in the Boston-based Colored American Magazine (1901-02). The novel features concealed and mistaken identities, dramatic…

  • Barford Abbey

    Barford Abbey

    The great-grandmother of Downton Abbey, Barford Abbey is among the first of a new genre of “abbey fictions.” Using the abbey as both a site…

  • Dreams

    Dreams

    Dreams is a work that defies conventional categorization; however, one might best capture its unique formal structure by construing it as a series of prose…

  • Are They Women?

    Are They Women?

    Deeply engaged in women’s rights debates and discussions of the “third sex,” Are They Women? is about the lively communities of lesbians across turn-of-the-century central…

  • Agnes Grey

    Agnes Grey

    Agnes Grey was one of a trio of novels that defined the “governess novel” in 1847 and 1848. Alongside Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair, Agnes…

  • Heart of Darkness - Ed. Goonetilleke - Third Edition

    Heart of Darkness – Ed. Goonetilleke – Third Edition

    The first incarnation of this Broadview edition of Heart of Darkness appeared in 1995, the second in 1999; both were widely acclaimed, and the Goonetilleke…

  • Oroonoko

    Oroonoko

    The best-known work by Aphra Behn, Oroonoko is an important contribution to the development of the novel in English. Though it predates the British abolition…

  • Casino Royale

    Casino Royale

    Casino Royale (1953), Ian Fleming’s first novel, introduced James Bond and other recurring characters of the Bond series of novels and short stories. Complex, even…

  • Popular Culture

    Popular Culture

    Popular Culture: A Broadview Topics Reader is an accessible collection of non-fiction writing for composition students and students of popular culture. The anthology takes an…

  • The Dead Alive

    The Dead Alive

    In this 1874 novella by Wilkie Collins, the celebrated British writer of sensation fiction tells the tale of two brothers sentenced to be executed for…

  • We

    We

    Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We is one of the great classics of dystopian fiction. Experimental and provocative in both style and content, it was the first…

  • Benito Cereno

    Benito Cereno

    “Benito Cereno,” a story of atmospheric Gothic horror and striking political resonance, represents Herman Melville’s most profound and unsettling engagement with the horrors of New…

  • When the Sleeper Wakes

    When the Sleeper Wakes

    As George Orwell wrote in 1940, “Everyone who has ever read When the Sleeper Wakes remembers it.” Graham, the “sleeper” of the title, falls into…

  • Captain Singleton

    Captain Singleton

    Following the success of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe wrote a new fiction, the story of an English pirate whose success eclipsed every buccaneer the Atlantic…

  • Heart of Darkness - Ed. Peters

    Heart of Darkness – Ed. Peters

    Heart of Darkness is based upon Joseph Conrad’s own experience in the Congo; “it is,” as he remarks in his 1916 author’s note to Youth:…

  • Castle Rackrent

    Castle Rackrent

    Castle Rackrent—Maria Edgeworth’s first novel, and the work for which she was and is best known—occupies a most unusual place in the history both of…