Subject: Classic Fiction | Page #4
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North and South Elizabeth Gaskell
When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and... read more »
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Notes from the Underground Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One of the most profound and most unsettling works of modern literature, Notes from Underground remains a cultural and literary watershed. In these pages Dostoevsky unflinchingly examines the dark, mysterious depths of the human heart. The Underground Man so chillingly depicted here has become an archetypal figure... read more »
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No Thoroughfare Charles Dickens
A story of mistaken identities, courage, justice, and a journey that stretches from the depths of the city of London to the Alps and the Mediterranean. read more »
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Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham
A potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern man's yearning for freedom. This classic tells the story of Philip Carey, a sensitive boy born with a clubfoot who is orphaned and raised by a religious aunt and uncle. Philip yearns for adventure, and at eighteen leaves home, eventually pursuing a... read more »
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Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
At the heart of Dickens's second novel is a story as much about crime and poverty as it is about justice and charity. Orphaned at birth, Oliver Twist grows up under the loveless, relentless watch of a workhouse. He runs away with hopes for a better life in London, only to become–at the hands of the unforgettable... read more »
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Oroonoko Aphra Behn
When Prince Oroonoko's passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko's noble bearing soon wins the respect of his English captors, but his struggle for freedom brings about his destruction... read more »
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Palmetto-Leaves Harriet Beecher Stowe
In 1867, Stowe settled in a small cottage in Mandarin, Florida, overlooking the St. Johns River. She had promised her Boston publisher another novel but was so taken with northeast Florida that she produced instead a series of sketches of the land and the people which she submitted in 1872 under the title Palmetto... read more »
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Pamela - Volume 1 Samuel Richardson
Volume 1 of Richardson's classic Pamela. One of the most spectacular successes of the burgeoning literary marketplace of eighteeent-century London, Pamela also marked a defining moment in the emergence of the modern novel. In the words of one contemporary, it divided the world 'into two different Parties, Pamelists... read more »
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Pamela - Volume 2 Samuel Richardson
Volume 2 of Richardson's classic Pamela. One of the most spectacular successes of the burgeoning literary marketplace of eighteeent-century London, Pamela also marked a defining moment in the emergence of the modern novel. In the words of one contemporary, it divided the world 'into two different Parties, Pamelists... read more »
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Pan Knut Hamsun
A multi-layered psychological masterpiece of human perversity and pride in the face of love and sensual attraction. Romantically awkward hunter, fisherman and nature-lover Lieutenant Thomas Glahn lives in a cabin away from society -- alone, except for his dog and occasional interactions with the locals including the... read more »
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Paris Émile Zola
The concluding volume of the Three Cities trilogy is very different from Lourdes and Rome. Whilst recounting the struggles and fate of Abbe Froment and his brother Guillaume, and entering largely into the problem of Capital and Labour, which problem has done so much to turn the masses away from Christianity, it... read more »
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Persuasion Jane Austen
Anne Elliot is one of Austen's quietest heroines, but also one of the strongest and the most open to change. She lives at the time of the Napoleonic wars, a time of accident, adventure, the making of new fortunes and alliances. A woman of no importance, she manoeuvres in her restricted circumstances as her long-time... read more »
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Phineas Finn Anthony Trollope
The novel is set against the background of the Reform Bill of 1867, and focuses on an Irish Member of the British House of Commons; in it Trollope explores the relations between the distinct elements of 'the United Kingdom'. Phineas has a personal chronicle which largely dominates the political calendar and it is... read more »
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Phineas Redux Anthony Trollope
The fourth novel in Trollope's Palliser series, Phineas Redux stands on its own as a compelling work of political intrigue, personal crisis, and romantic jealousy. Phineas Finn lives quietly in Dublin, resigned to the fact that his political career is over and coming to terms with the death of his wife. He receives... read more »
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Pierre Herman Melville
With profound moral and philosophical ideals, Melville has presented a novel that touches the heart and mind. the idiosyncratic characters are etched into the plot of the novel and fight for distinguishing between the right and wrong. an amalgamation of factors from popular fiction and gothic drama, it is a work... read more »
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Pierre and Jean Guy de Maupassant
Henry James's admiration for "this masterly little novel" has been echoed throughout the twentieth century by readers of Pierre et Jean. It marked a turning point in the development of French fiction, situated as it is between traditional social realism and the psychological novel. It isrecognized as a classic study... read more »
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Plain Tales from the Hills Rudyard Kipling
Set and published during the time of the British Raj, a time of subalterns and tea planters, the 40 stories in Plain Tales From The Hills are played out under an unforgiving sun, revealing the deceit, faithlessness, shallowness, despair, mistrust, hate, and petty jealousies rife amongst the British inhabitants of... read more »
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Poor Folk Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Poor Folk is an epistolary novel -- that is, a tale told as a series of letters between the characters. And oh, what characters these are! Makar Dievushkin Alexievitch is a copy writer, barely squeaking by; Barbara Dobroselova Alexievna works as a seamstress, and both face the sort of everyday humiliation society... read more »
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Post Haste R. M. Ballantyne
This tale is founded chiefly on facts furnished by the Postmaster-General's Annual Reports, and gathered, during personal intercourse and investigation, at the General Post-Office of London and its Branches. It is intended to illustrate--not by any means to exhaust--the subject of postal work, communication, and... read more »
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Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
Elizabeth Bennet is Austen's most liberated and unambiguously appealing heroine, and Pride and Prejudice has remained over most of the past two centuries Austen's most popular novel. The story turns on the marriage prospects of the five daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet: Elizabeth forms a prejudice against the proud... read more »
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Rome Émile Zola
Three years after his visit to Lourdes, Abbé Pierre Froment has written an ecumenical work, New Rome, that has been placed on the Index. In an attempt to have this veto lifted he travels to Rome, where he is subjected to a variety of subtle delaying tactics designed to bring him to contrition and resignation. His... read more »
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Ruth Elizabeth Gaskell
Ruth Hilton is an orphaned young seamstress who catches the eye of a gentleman, Henry Bellingham, who is captivated by her simplicity and beauty. When she loses her job and home, he offers her comfort and shelter, only to cruelly desert her soon after. Nearly dead with grief and shame, Ruth is offered the chance of... read more »
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Sarrasine Honoré de Balzac
Ostensibly a tale of sexual androgyny, the power of love, and its bitter aftermath, this volume is in fact a study of the force of art on society and the deadly immortality of beauty. The nameless narrator attends a ball held by a wealthy Parisian family whose fortune comes from a work of art, and there meets an... read more »
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Shirley Charlotte Brontë
Robert Moore is a harsh mill-owner who pushes his workers so far that one of them tries to kill him. While dealing with the attempt on his life, Robert is also confronted with two very different women. One is Caroline Helstone, a shy girl virtually imprisoned in her uncle's rectory and in love with Robert. The other... read more »
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Silas Marner George Eliot
Accused of a crime he didn't commit and unjustly forced from his home town, Silas lives a reclusive and godless life, finding love and companionship only in material objects. It will take the theft of his gold and the discovery of an abandoned infant to remind him of the importance of human relationships and faith... read more »
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Sketches by Boz Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens's first book, Sketches by Boz, heralded an exciting new voice in English literature. This richly varied collection of observation, fancy and fiction shows the London he knew so intimately at its best and worst - its streets, theatres, inns, pawnshops, law courts, prisons, omnibuses and the river... read more »
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Smoke Ivan Turgenev
Set in Baden-Baden, Smoke is Ivan Turgenev's most cosmopolitan novels. It is an exquisite study of politics and society and an enduringly poignant love story. Smoke, with its European setting, barbed wit, and visionary call for Russia to look west, became the center of a famous philosophical breach between Turgenev... read more »
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Sodom and Gomorrah Marcel Proust
The narrator not only depicts the class tensions of a changing France at the beginning of the twentieth century but also exposes the decadence of aristocratic Parisian society and muses upon the subjects of homosexuality and sexual jealousy. Taking up for the first time in his novels, Proust explores the theme of... read more »
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Swann's Way Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. In the overture to Swann's Way, the themes of the whole of In Search of Lost Time are introduced, and the narrator's childhood in Paris and Combray is... read more »
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Sybil Benjamin Disraeli
Sybil, or The Two Nations is one of the finest novels to depict the social problems of class-ridden Victorian England. When published, it was a sensation for its immediacy and readability brought the plight of the working classes sharply to the attention of the reading public. The 'Two Nations' of the alternative... read more »