Topics in Literature

Showing 145–168 of 367 results

  • The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

    Edgar Allan Poe’s only long fiction has provoked intense scholarly discussions about its meaning since its first publication. The novel relates the adventures of Pym…

  • The Sign of Four

    Arthur Conan Doyle’s second Sherlock Holmes novel is both a detective story and an imperial romance. Ostensibly the story of Mary Morstan, a beautiful young…

  • Waverley

    Sir Walter Scott’s first novel, Waverley enjoyed tremendous popularity upon its first publication. The novel is set during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, which sought…

  • The Wood Beyond the World

    A groundbreaking fantasy novel, The Wood Beyond the World tells the story of a young man, Golden Walter, who finds himself in a strange and…

  • The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories

    In 1898, Henry James wrote a novella that would become one of the most famous and critically discussed ghost stories ever written, The Turn of…

  • Robinson Crusoe

    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…

  • An Imperative Duty

    An Imperative Duty tells the story of Rhoda Aldgate, a young woman on the verge of marriage who has been raised by her aunt to…

  • “We Must Be Up and Doing”

    African American women have been “up and doing” for their communities for as long as they have been in the United States, and their ability…

  • Cometh Up As A Flower

    An important sensation novel, Cometh Up as a Flower made Rhoda Broughton’s reputation and fortune while also attracting harsh criticism. Nell LeStrange, the heroine, is…

  • Adeline Mowbray

    When Adeline Mowbray puts her mother Editha’s radical theories into practice by eloping with, but not marrying, a notorious writer, the mother and daughter are…

  • Flatland

    Flatland (1884) is an influential mathematical fantasy that simultaneously provides an introduction to non-Euclidean geometry and a satire on the Victorian class structure, issues of…

  • Tales of Wonder

    In the late eighteenth century, Matthew Gregory “Monk” Lewis, a notorious author of lurid Gothic novels and plays, began to gather this collection of horror…

  • The Country of the Pointed Firs

    A sharply observed, affectionate, and unsentimental portrait of life in a Maine fishing village, The Country of the Pointed Firs is Sarah Orne Jewett’s most…

  • The History of Sandford and Merton

    Among the earliest novels written about children, for children, The History of Sandford and Merton was enormously popular for a century and a half after…

  • The Importance of Being Earnest

    The Importance of Being Earnest marks a central moment in late-Victorian literature, not only for its wit but also for its role in the shift…

  • Under Western Eyes

    Joseph Conrad’s last overtly political novel, Under Western Eyes is considered to be one of his greatest works. Set in pre-Revolutionary Russia, the novel tells…

  • The Call of the Wild

    A best-seller from its first publication in 1903, The Call of the Wild tells the story of Buck, a big mongrel dog who is shipped…

  • The Secret Agent

    The Secret Agent is set in the seedy world of Adolf Verloc, a storekeeper and double agent in late-Victorian London who pretends to sympathize with…

  • Concert of Voices – Second Edition

    Concert of Voices combines poetry, fiction, drama, and essays in an anthology of world literature in English. This second edition preserves the first edition’s breadth…

  • Candide

    The philosophical problem of evil—that a supposedly good God could allow terrible human suffering—troubled the minds of eighteenth-century thinkers as it troubles us today. Voltaire’s…

  • The Man in the Moone

    Arguably the first work of science fiction in English, Francis Godwin’s The Man in the Moone was published in 1638, pseudonymously and posthumously. The novel,…

  • The Basset Table

    The Basset Table follows the fortunes of Lady Reveller, who runs a table where her friends play the card game basset, and her struggle to…

  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

    Anne Brontë’s second and last novel was widely and contentiously reviewed upon its 1848 publication, in part because its subject matter domestic violence, alcoholism, women’s…

  • Autobiographical Sketches

    Annie Wood Besant (1847-1933) was a problematic and notorious figure in Victorian England, questioning and then breaking from the Anglican Church to become an atheist,…