Topics in Literature

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  Laon and Cythna

  Laon and Cythna is one of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s most celebrated, and most controversial, literary works. At once philosophical treatise and love story, it follows…

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  The Garies and Their Friends

  Unjustly overlooked in its own time, Frank J. Webb’s novel of pre-Civil War Philadelphia weaves together action, humor, and social commentary. The Garies and Their…

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  The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World

  First published in 1666, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle’s Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World is the first fictional portrayal of women…

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  The Sorceress of the Strand and Other Stories

  In 1898, The Strand Magazine, one of the most influential publications of the Victorian fin de siècle, deemed best-selling author and editor L.T. Meade a…

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  Colonel Jack

  Long dismissed by critics as a novel of merely historical interest, Colonel Jack is one of Daniel Defoe’s most entertaining, revealing, and complex works. It…

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  Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada

  Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada collects 26 seminal critical essays indispensable to our understanding of the rapidly growing field of Indigenous literatures. The…

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  Civilization and Its Discontents

  In Civilization and Its Discontents Freud extends and clarifies his analysis of religion; analyzes human unhappiness in contemporary civilization; ratifies the critical importance of the…

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  Ann Veronica

  H.G. Wells’s 1909 novel centres on the coming of age of the spirited Ann Veronica, who runs away from her sheltered suburban home to live…

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  Black Beauty

  Continuously in print and translated into multiple languages since it was first published, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty is a classic work of children’s literature and…

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  Mandeville

  William Godwin’s Mandeville was described as his best novel by Percy Shelley, who sent a copy to Lord Byron, and it was immediately recognized by…

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  On Perpetual Peace

  Kant’s landmark essay “On Perpetual Peace” is as timely, relevant, and inspiring today as when it was first written over 200 years ago. In it…

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  The Western Captive and Other Indian Stories

  This edition recovers Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s successful 1842 novel The Western Captive; or, The Times of Tecumseh and includes many of Oakes Smith’s other writings…

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  Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African

  A contemporary critic described Ignatius Sancho as “what is very uncommon for men of his complexion, A man of letters.” A London shopkeeper, former butler,…

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  Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Third Edition

  First published in 1886 as a “shilling shocker,” Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde takes the basic struggle between good and evil and adds to the…

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  Beautiful Joe

  One of the first animal viewpoint novels published in North America, Margaret Marshall Saunders’s Beautiful Joe tells the story of an abused dog and his…

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  Domestic Manners of the Americans

  Frances Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans, complemented by Auguste Hervieu’s satiric illustrations, took the transatlantic world by storm in 1832. An unusual combination of…

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  The Merchant of Venice

  The Merchant of Venice is best known for its complex and ambiguous portrait of the Jewish moneylender Shylock—and of European anti-Semitism. Fascinating in its engagement…

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  The Red Badge of Courage

  The story of a young soldier, Henry Fleming, who flees a Civil War battle, The Red Badge of Courage has been celebrated for its depiction…

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  Peru and Peruvian Tales

  Helen Maria Williams’s epic poem Peru, first published in 1784, movingly recounts the story of Francisco Pizarro’s brutal conquest and exploitation of the Incas and…

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  The Winter’s Tale

  Neither comedy nor tragedy, The Winter’s Tale contains elements of each genre, and defies easy classification. It experiments, like many of Shakespeare’s late plays, with…

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  The Manor House of De Villerai

  Rosanna Mullins Leprohon’s The Manor House of De Villerai, A Tale of Canada Under the French Dominion is a literary milestone—it is the first Canadian…

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  The Tunnel

  The Tunnel is the fourth volume in Dorothy Richardson’s novel series Pilgrimage. The series, set in the years 1893-1912, chronicles the life of Miriam Henderson,…

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  Pointed Roofs

  The first chapter-volume of Dorothy Richardson’s thirteen-volume novel series Pilgrimage, Pointed Roofs is a coming of age story. The protagonist is Miriam Henderson, seventeen years…

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  The Female American – Second Edition

  When it first appeared in 1767, this novel was called a “sort of second Robinson Crusoe; full of wonders.” Indeed, The Female American is an…