Category: Novels

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 […]

Stevenson’s first great success was Treasure Island, and although his next book, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was of a totally different character, it went over the world with amazing rapidity. The ethical problem involved in the abnormal and gruesome situation he invented may have had nothing to do with the popularity of the work, […]

This story was the forerunner of The Adventures of Philip, which in turn was followed by The Virginians, and in all three novels many of the same characters appear. AMONG the English who, possessed of leisure and means, rushed over to the Continent after the second restoration of Louis XVIII was a young widow named […]

(Iréland, 1667-1745) Travels into Several Remote Natlons of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver, was written by Swift while he was Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, in his so-called “exile” to Ireland which began with the accession of George I and the downfall of Swift’s party, the Tories, in 1714. In this year Swift had founded […]

(United States, 1869) This fine portrayal of modern life in the middle West is considered as the author’s masterpiece. It was dramatized a few years after its appearance as a novel. IN college John Harkless had been called “the Great Harkless.” He never had understood his immense popularity; he had been chief editor of the […]

This story was intended to be the joint work of Mr. Stimson and the late John Boyle O’Reilly. The plan had been discussed by the authors, and the outline of the story fixed, but nothing had been written when Mr. O’Reilly died. Mr. Stimson then worked out the plan alone. The story purports to narrate […]

The success of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine was so great and so immediate that a sequel was loudly called for; and Mr. Stockton wrote The Dusalites, which is now incorporated with the, first story to shake one book and is so presented in this version. HILE going from San Francisco, to Yokohama I became […]

(United States, 1823—1902) This novel was the first of three written by this woman of genius, the wife of Richard Henry Stoddard, the poet. It was published in 1862 and was followed by two others: Two Men and Temple House. “These tales, their scenes and period, antedate the new generation which is, after all, the […]

(United States, 1812-1896) The critic who spoke of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the “most potent and widely read novel in modern literature,” might well have omitted the last two words of his characterization. It is doubtful whether any work of fiction, however ancient, has had as many readers in all the centuries of its existence […]

This novel has been described as a series of pictures of life as seen from the kitchen, best room, barnyard, meadow, and wood-lot of a Massachusetts parsonage of pre-locomotive days. In a preface the supposed teller of the story, Horace Holyoke, declares it his object to interpret to the world the New England life and […]