he story of Henry Esmond, a colonel in the service of Queen Anne of England, begins in his youth, as the illegitimate and orphaned cousin of the Viscount and Lady of Castlewood. The Jacobite family gradually...
The Luck of Barry Lyndon is a picaresque novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in serial form in 1844, about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy....
“I think I could be a good woman, if I had five thousand a year,” observes beautiful and clever Becky Sharp, one of the wickedest—and most appealing—women in all of literature. Becky is just one of the...
Set in 19th century London, England, this novel features a young English gentleman Arthur Pendennis born in the country who sets out to seek his place in life and society. In line with other Thackeray's works,...
Catherine: A Story was the first full-length work of fiction produced by William Makepeace Thackeray. It first appeared in serialized installments in Fraser's Magazine between May 1839 and February 1840. Thackeray's...
The principal setting is a communal farm called Blithedale (i.e., "Happy Valley"), a would-be modern Arcadia along the lines of the anti-capitalist ideals of Charles Fourier, yet is nonetheless destroyed by...
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (commonly known as simply "Moll Flanders") is a novel written by Daniel Defoe in 1722. Defoe wrote this after his work as a journalist and pamphleteer....
Les Misérables (1862) is a novel by French author Victor Hugo, and among the best-known novels of the 19th century. It follows the lives and interactions of several French characters over a twenty year period...
Stevenson’s brooding historical romance demonstrates his most abiding theme—the elemental struggle between good and evil—as it unfolds against a hauntingly beautiful Scottish landscape, amid the fierce...
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery...
Walden (also known as Life in the Woods) by Henry David Thoreau is one of the best-known non-fiction books written by an American. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau's life for two years and two months in...
War and Peace is a novel by Leo Tolstoy, first published from 1865 to 1869 in Russkii Vestnik, which tells the story of Russian society during the Napoleonic Era. It is usually described as one of Tolstoy's...
Being memoirs of the adventures of David Balfour in the year 1751: how he was kidnapped and cast away; his sufferings in a desert isle; his journey in the wild highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart...
In approaching "The Historical Nights' Entertainment" I set myself the task of reconstructing, in the fullest possible detail and with all the colour available from surviving records, a group of more or less...
