Subject: Classic Fiction | Page #3
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Home of the Gentry Ivan Turgenev
Coming back to the nest of his family home in Russia after years of fruitless endeavours away from his roots, Lavretsky decides to turn his back on the vacuous salons of Paris and his frivolous and unfaithful wife Varvara Pavlovna. On his return he meets Liza, the daughter of one of his cousins, whom he had known... read more »
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Howards End E. M. Forster
The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic, leading lives of "telegrams and anger." When the elder Mrs. Wilcox dies and her family discovers she has left their country home—Howards End—to one of the Schlegel sisters, a crisis between the two... read more »
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Hunger Knut Hamsun
A must-read for fans of modernist literature, Hunger is a literary tour de force that was influenced equally by Dostoyevsky and Zola but made new by author Knut Hamsun's unique creative approach. The novel details the descent into near-starvation of a young intellectual and the downward spiral of misadventures he... read more »
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In the Cage Henry James
Henry James's novella In the Cage tells the story of a young women, the "betrothed of Mr Mudge", who works at a post-office counter sending telegrams mostly from the "idle rich" to their fellows to arrange their meetings, parties and other affairs. Concerned, as ever, with the plight of the not so well-to-do--and... read more »
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In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Marcel Proust
When publiched, Within a Budding Grove was awarded the Prix Goncourt, bringing the author immediate fame. In this second volume of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator turns from the childhood reminiscences of Swann's Way to memories of his adolescence. Having gradually become indifferent to Swann's daughter... read more »
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Jacob's Room Virginia Woolf
Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob's life is traced from the time he is a small boy playing on the beach, through his years in Cambridge, then in... read more »
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Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
Often thought of as Thomas Hardy's best work, not only for the elaborate structure of the plot, where small and subtle details lead to the character's ruin, but in the themes that range from how human loneliness and sensuality can stop a person from trying to fulfill his dreams; to how, when free from the trap of... read more »
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Kipps H. G. Wells
Orphaned at an early age, raised by his aunt and uncle, and apprenticed for seven years to a draper, Artie Kipps is stunned to discover upon reading a newspaper advertisement that he is the grandson of a wealthy gentleman and the inheritor of his fortune. Thrown dramatically into the upper classes, he struggles... read more »
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L'Assommoir Émile Zola
Abandoned by her lover and left to bring up their two children alone, Gervaise Macquart has to fight to earn an honest living. When she accepts the marriage proposal of Monsieur Coupeau, it seems as though she is on the path to a decent, respectable life at last. But with her husband's drinking and the unexpected... read more »
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Last Words Stephen Crane
Remarkably prolific writer Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis at the tender age of 28. But in the years before his premature demise, Crane exerted a profound influence on American literature that would resonate for decades after his death. The posthumous collection Last Words brings together a series of stories... read more »
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Les Misérables Victor Hugo
One of the most widely read novels of all time, Les Misérables was the crowning literary achievement of Victor Hugo’s stunning career. Though he was considered the greatest French writer of his day, Hugo was forced to flee the country because of his opposition to Napoleon III. While in exile he completed Les... read more »
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Little Dorrit Charles Dickens
As for many of Dickens' novels, highlighting social injustices is at the heart of Little Dorrit. His father was imprisoned for debt, and Dickens' shines a spotlight on the fate of many who are unable to repay a debt when the ability to seek work is denied. Amy Dorrit is the youngest daughter of a man imprisoned for... read more »
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Liza of Lambeth W. Somerset Maugham
Liza of Lambeth narrates Liza's last four months alive. She lives in a working-class area of London, and as the youngest of thirteen siblings she is left to look after their incompetent mother. She rejects a local suitor, but finds herself attracted to a mysterious stranger on a site-seeing trip. The novel gives... read more »
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Lourdes Émile Zola
In this moving depiction of a pilgrimage to Lourdes, the master French realist has created a novel of vivid characters and subtle commentary on suffering and the belief in miracles as the last desperate refuge from pain. Based on his own trip to the fabled grotto, the novel follows a simple five-part structure... read more »
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Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister Aphra Behn
An epistolary novel - the first ever written - and an innovative and pioneering work. An exploration of the sexual politics of seventeenth century English society, the novel follows Sylvia's love for her brother-in-law, her sexual awakening and her inevitable downfall. read more »
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Maggie Stephen Crane
This harrowing tale of a young girl in the slums is a searing portrayal of turn-of-the-century New York, and Stephen Crane's most innovative work. When published, it broke new ground with its vivid characters, its brutal naturalism, and its empathic rendering of the lives of the poor. It remains both powerful... read more »
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Mansfield Park Jane Austen
A poor young girl, Fanny, is sheltered by Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, her uncle and aunt) along with their four children, Tom, Edmund, Maria and Julia, in their house at Mansfield Park. Treated less preferably to the other children, she is provided support by Edmund, whose kindness leads her to fall in love with... read more »
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Martin Chuzzlewit Charles Dickens
Dickens turns his satirical eye on America in "Martin Chuzzlewit", when young Martin embarks on a voyage that is destined to affect the fortunes of his family and his love. A story about the contrasting destinies of two descendants of the brothers Chuzzlewit, both born and bred to the same heritage of selfishness... read more »
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Martin Eden Jack London
Martin Eden, Jack London’s semiautobiographical novel about a struggling young writer, is considered by many to be the author’s most mature work. Personifying London’s own dreams of education and literary fame as a young man in San Francisco, Martin Eden’s impassioned but ultimately ineffective battle to... read more »
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Mary Barton Elizabeth Gaskell
Set in Manchester in the 1840s, Mary Barton depicts the effects of economic and physical hardship upon the city's working-class community. Paralleling the novel's treatment of the relationship between masters and men, the suffering of the poor, and the workmen's angry response, is the story of Mary herself--a... read more »
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Meissonier Henri Barbusse
The whole artist, whose work we are about to study side by side with his life, is summed up in this anecdote. It reveals one of the most typical sides of his temperament, and, consequently, of his talent: a constant and scrupulous endeavour, maintained even at the price of sacrifices that would seem excessive to the... read more »
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Middlemarch George Eliot
Often called the greatest nineteenth-century British novelist, George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) created in Middlemarch a vast panorama of life in a provincial Midlands town. At the story’s center stands the intellectual and idealistic Dorothea Brooke—a character who in many ways resembles Eliot... read more »
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Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders recounts the story of her extraordinary life, from her birth in Newgate prison to her declining years in married prosperity. After being seduced in the home of her adoptive family she lives off her wits and her beauty, as a whore, 'five times a Wife', and a thief, and is eventually transported to... read more »
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Moran of the Lady Letty Frank Norris
This is to be a story of a battle, at least one murder, and several sudden deaths. For that reason it begins with a pink tea and among the mingled odors of many delicate perfumes and the hale, frank smell of Caroline Testout roses. There had been a great number of debutantes 'coming out' that season in San Francisco... read more »
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My Lady Ludlow Elizabeth Gaskell
Lady Ludlow is absolute mistress of Hanbury Court and a resolute opponent of anything that might disturb the class system into which she was born. She will keep no servant who can read and write and insists that the lower orders have no rights, but only duties. But the winds of change are blowing through the village... read more »
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Mystery of Edwin Drood Charles Dickens
The biggest mystery of The Mystery of Edwin Drood is how it ends. It began as a serial, as nearly all of Dickens' novels did, but only six instalments were published before the author's death in 1870. What we know about Edwin Drood is this: he is betrothed to a young woman named Rosa Bud; they are fond of each... read more »
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Nana Émile Zola
Prompted by his theories of heredity and environment, Zola set out out to show Nana, the golden fly, rising out of the underworld to feed on society--a predetermined product of her origins. Nana's latent destructiveness is mirrored in the Empire's, and they reflect each others' disintegration and final collapse in... read more »
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Nicholas Nickleby Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby was hailed as a comic triumph and firmly established Dickens as a 'literary gentleman'. It has a full supporting cast of delectable characters that range from the iniquitous Wackford Squeers and his family, to the delightful Mrs Nickleby, taking in the eccentric Crummles and his travelling players... read more »
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Night and Day Virginia Woolf
Woolf portrays the fascinations of self-discovery through relationships with other people, and she also looks into the intricacies of love--are we aware of love? Katharine Hilbery is beautiful and privileged but uncertain of her future. She must choose between becoming engaged to the oddly prosaic poet William, and... read more »
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Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock
Set in a former abbey whose owner, Christopher Glowry, is host to visitors who enjoy his hospitality and engage in endless debate. Among these guests are figures recognizable to Peacock's contemporaries, including characters based on Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr. Glowry's son Scythrop (also modeled on... read more »