Category: Novels

This story appeared first in Fraser’s Magazine during 1844, and purported to be by “Fitz-Boodle,” who had previously contributed his Confessions and Professions. It was written in ironical vein, with the intention to burlesque Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, Pelham. The composition of Barry Lyndon seems to have given Thackeray not a little trouble. In August, 1844, he […]

This story was Thackeray’s first great success. Many of the characters were drawn from life, and reappear often in succeeding stories. MR. JOHN PENDENNIS was a little, quiet old gentleman, extremely mild and genteel, who had amassed a very modest competency by combining the vocations of apothecary and surgeon in a humble little shop graced […]

This novel is the best known of Thackeray’s works, and it has given him a reputation as a cynic which he hardly deserves. A common criticism of the story is that the good people in it are all fools, and the clever people all knaves; and the criticism is not wholly unfounded. It is a […]

The period of this novel is the reign of Queen Anne, when the Pretender, the son of James II of England, was trying to gain possession of the throne. The story has a sequel in The Virginians. THEN Thomas Esmond married his elderly cousin, Isabel, and presently came into his uncle’s titles and estates as […]

Lovers of Thackeray’s works are wont to remark—with what justice each reader will opine for himself—that the character of Colonel Newcome is the most perfect gentleman depicted in fiction. A single word in this story, when it was first published, produced a curious misunderstanding in the minds of many American readers. Thackeray had written an […]

Aside from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which Mrs. Stowe herself regarded rather as a series of visions than as a production of her own mind, The Minister’s Wooing is held to be her most artistic fiction. It appeared first as a serial in the Atlantic Monthly (1858-1859), and was issued in book form in 1859. Basipg […]

Mrs. Stowe’s own account of the origin of this tale accompanied its first appearance in the Atlantic Monthly, in May, 1861: “The author was spending some weeks with a party of choice and very dear friends in an excursion to southern Italy [in April and May, 1860]. At Salerno the whole company were detained by […]

This story treats of Italian life among the fruit-venders of New Orleans, its pivotal incident bringing into relief the discipline and power for vengeance of the Mafia. It was written just before the sensational execution in the prison, by a committee of reputable American citizens, of eleven Italian murderers who had been fraudulently acquitted of […]

(France, 1804—1857) On this novel rests principally the fame of its author. Imbued with the emotional socialistic literature of his time, he wrote this, the first French novel treating of the conditions of the working people. Primarily its object, as shown by many interpolated reflections, was to point out the social iniquity of present conditions […]

The legend of the Wandering Jew is somewhat uncertain in its origin and its significance. It is to the effect that when Christ was on the way to Calvary, bearing His cross, He wished to rest before the house of a Jew named Ahasuerus, who drove Him away; that the Saviour then said to the […]