Topics in Literature
Showing 169–192 of 447 resultsSorted by latest
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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Michael Field: The Poet
“Michael Field” was the literary pseudonym of two women, Katharine Bradley (1846-1914) and her niece Edith Cooper (1862-1913). The women were poets, playwrights, diarist, and…
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The Island of Doctor Moreau
A classic of science fiction and a dark meditation on Darwinian thought in the late Victorian period, The Island of Doctor Moreau explores the possibility…
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
With its gripping plot and pungent dialogue, Uncle Tom’s Cabin offers readers today a passionate portrait of a nation on the verge of disunion and…
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Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater remains its author’s most famous and frequently-read work and one of the period’s central statements about both the power and…
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The Last of the Mohicans
The Last of the Mohicans enjoyed tremendous popularity both in America and abroad, offering its readers not only a variation on the immensely popular traditional…
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Reuben and Rachel
Susanna Haswell Rowson, a popular and prolific writer, actress, and educator in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, had a truly transatlantic life and…
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The Diary of a Nobody
The Diary of a Nobody, the spoof diary of Charles Pooter, a London clerk, first appeared as a book in 1892 and has never been…
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The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan
In 1810, the orientalist scholar Charles Stewart translated and published an extraordinary travel narrative written by a Persian-speaking Indian poet and scholar named Mirza Abu…
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The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson
In 1754 the British adventurer, compiler, and novelist Edward Kimber published The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Anderson. Rooted in a tale…
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Euphemia
Charlotte Lennox’s Euphemia, published in 1790 at the end of her professional career, is an extraordinary account of pre-Revolutionary America from a woman’s perspective. Constructed…
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Lydia Sigourney
Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791–1865) was the most widely read and respected pre-Civil War American woman poet in the English-speaking world. In a half-century career, Sigourney…