Topics in Literature

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  Notes from the Underground

  Notes from the Underground is recounted from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who describes himself as sick, spiteful, and unattractive. His thoughts and his…

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  Fairy Tales in Popular Culture

  It wasn’t so long ago that the fairy tale was comfortably settled as an established and respectable part of children’s literature. Since the fairy tale…

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  Gothic Evolutions

  The texts in this unique collection range from the Gothic Revival of the late eighteenth century through to the late Victorian gothic, and from the…

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  Robinson Crusoe, Modernized Edition

  Robinson Crusoe is one of the most famous literary characters in history, and his story has spawned hundreds of retellings. Inspired by the life of…

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  The Octoroon

  Regarded by Bernard Shaw as a master of the theatre, Dion Boucicault was arguably the most important figure in drama in North America and in…

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  Henry V

  Upon opening their expensive new book in 1623, buyers of the folio collection of William Shakespeare’s plays were promised The Life of Henry the Fift.…

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  The Clockmaker

  The serial publication of The Clockmaker in 1835-36 launched Canadian judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton to literary fame. A broad satire with a garrulous, deceitful American…

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  The Siege of Jerusalem

  The Siege of Jerusalem (c. 1370-90 CE) is a difficult text. By twenty-first-century standards, it is gruesomely violent and offensive. It tells the story of…

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  A Child of the Jago

  “Learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing. … Do your devilmost … for the Jago’s…

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  Conclusion of the Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph

  In 1761, Frances Sheridan published her novel The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, which became a popular and widely praised example of the sentimental novel.…

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  Doctor Faustus: The B Text

  Doctor Faustus is one of early modern English drama’s most fascinating characters, and Doctor Faustus one of its most problematic plays. Selling his soul to…

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  A Letter Concerning Toleration

  Locke argued that religious belief ought to be compatible with reason, that no king, prince or magistrate rules legitimately without the consent of the people,…

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  The Daughter of Adoption

  John Thelwall’s The Daughter of Adoption: A Tale of Modern Times is a witty and wide-ranging work in which the picaresque and sentimental novel of…

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  The O’Briens and the O’Flahertys

  The O’Briens and the O’Flahertys is a fast-paced tale of political intrigue and aristocratic vanity—a romp through 1793 Dublin as Ireland pitches towards the United…

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  Lady Audley’s Secret – A Drama in Two Acts

  Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s shocking and suspenseful novel Lady Audley’s Secret was one of the most popular examples of the “sensation fiction” craze of the 1860s.…

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  The Tragedy of Tragedies

  Best known today for the novels Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, Henry Fielding was just as renowned in his own time as a prolific and…

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  Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

  “The art of travelling is only a branch of the art of thinking,” Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in one of her many reviews of works of…

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  Mrs. Dalloway – Broadview Edition

  Mrs. Dalloway takes place on one day in the middle of June 1923. Its plot is seemingly thin: a middle-aged society hostess is having a…

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  Herland and Related Writings

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s provocative utopian novel Herland, first published in 1915, tells its story through the observations of three male explorers who discover a land…

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  The Turkish Embassy Letters

  In 1716, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s husband Edward Montagu was appointed British ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire. Montagu accompanied her husband…

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  Secret Commissions

  Lurid, controversial, and vulnerable to accusations of titillation or rabble-rousing, the works of Victorian investigative journalism collected here nonetheless brought unseen suffering into the light…

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  Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Poetry and Tales

  Edgar Allan Poe’s stories and poems are among the most haunting and indelible in American literature, but critics for decades persisted in seeing Poe as…

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  The Rivals and Polly Honeycombe

  The Rivals and Polly Honeycombe revolve around young women who wish the world would conform to novelistic convention. Unlike most eighteenth-century heroines keen on novel…

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  As You Like It

  Both a witty satire of literary cliché and a tender meditation on the varieties of love, As You Like It continues to be one of…