Literary Criticism
Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books
Charles W. Eliot, 21st President of Harvard University, edited this volume of prefaces ... authored by a Who's Who of World Literature: Baco…
The Duel
Known for his plays and short stories, Anton Chekhov also wrote a series of novellas, astonishing for their psychological complexity and com…
An Essay on Criticism
An Essay on Criticism is a foundational work of literary criticism by Alexander Pope, blending poetry and philosophical reflection. Written …
An Ideal Husband
The "Ideal Husband" of the title is Sir Robert Chiltern, with his equally upright wife Lady Chiltern. He has never committed a cri…
The Colonel's Dream
In this novel, Chesnutt described the hopelessness of Reconstruction in a post-Civil War South that was bent on reestablishing the former st…
The Emperor of Portugallia
Selma Lagerlöf was born in Vaermland, Sweden, in 1858 and enjoyed a long and very successful career as a writer, receiving the Nobel-Pr…
The Raven
Poe’s famous narrative poem and the author’s reflections on its composition. (David Wales)
Through the Magic Door
I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with i…
Arrowsmith
This 1926 Pulitzer Prize winning novel centers on the title character, a promising medical student who, as a doctor and following several in…
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
This is Mark Twain's vicious and amusing review of Fenimore Cooper's literary art. It is still read widely in academic circles. Twain's essa…
Where Angels Fear to Tread
On a journey to Tuscany with her young friend and traveling companion Caroline Abbott, widowed Lilia Herriton falls in love with both Italy …
Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens
“These papers were originally published as prefaces to the separate books of Dickens in one of the most extensive of those cheap libraries o…
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
Fenimore Cooper - author of The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, etc - has often been praised, but just as often been criticised for hi…
Chronicles of Avonlea
In this first collection of stories following the characters from the "Anne of Green Gables" series, we see 12 vignettes into the …
Victory
Recollections of the life of Axel Heyst, one-time manager of the liquidated Tropical Belt Coal Company in a fictitious island in the Pacific…
A Child of the Jago
A Child of the Jago immerses listeners in the gritty reality of London's East End during the late 19th century. Through the eyes of its youn…
The Town Traveller
The town traveller is himself a British salesman, living in a lower class part of London in the Victorian era. The story depicts his interac…
The Autobiography of Goethe
This Autobiography of Goethe has a lengthy introduction and short biography of Goethe's life by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) and was translate…
The Metropolis
In this 1907 novel about the extravagant life of New York City’s high society, the author of The Jungle, presents a portrait of the wealthy …
The Fallen Leaves
Amelius Goldenheart, the hero of this story, is expelled from a Utopian community in New England and finds himself in London. His story is d…