Villette is a novel by Charlotte Brontë, published in 1853. After an unspecified family disaster, protagonist Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school where she is...
Set in Yorkshire during the time of the Luddite unrest—a labor movement that began in 1811-1812 in an effort to protect the interests of the working class—the novel consists of two narrative strands woven...
Jane Eyre, the story of a young girl and her passage into adulthood, was an immediate commercial success at the time of its original publication in 1847. Its representation of the underside of domestic life...
Agnes Grey is an 1847 novel written by English author Anne Brontë. The novel is about a governess of that name and is said to be based on Brontë's own experiences in the field. It was Brontë's first novel....
Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte. The name of the novel comes...
The story of a woman who leaves her abusive, dissolute husband, and who must then support herself and her young son. By challenging the prevailing morals of the time the novel caused a critic to pronounce it...
Austen's "most wicked tale," Lady Susan is a short epistolary novel by Jane Austen, possibly written in 1794 but not published until 1871. Lady Susan is a selfish, attractive woman, who tries to trap the best...
Jane Austen’s first novel, Northanger Abbey—published posthumously in 1818—tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen’s...
The final novel by the acclaimed writer places heroine Anne Elliot, a woman of integrity and deep emotion, against the brutality and hypocrisy of Regency England.
At the age of ten, Fanny Price leaves the poverty of her Portsmouth home to be brought up among the family of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, in the chilly grandeur of Mansfield Park. She gradually falls...
Emma is a comic novel by Jane Austen, first published in December 1815, about the perils of misconstrued romance. The main character, Emma Woodhouse, is described in the opening paragraph as "handsome, clever,...
The story takes place in a small woodland village called Little Hintock, and concerns the efforts of an honest woodsman, Giles Winterborne, to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. Although they have...
Elinor and Marianne are two daughters of Mr. Dashwood by his second wife. They have a younger sister, Margaret, and an older half-brother named John. When their father dies, the family estate passes to John...
Polly's friendship with the wealthy Shaws of Boston helps them to build a new life and teaches her the truth about the relationship between happiness and riches.
Little Women or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888). Written and published in two parts in 1868 and 1869, the novel follows the lives of four sisters — Meg,...
Narrating from her deathbed, Matilda tells the story of her unnamed father's confession of incestuous love for her, followed by his suicide by drowning; her relationship with a gifted young poet called Woodville...
At the beginning of the book, we are told that Ethelberta was raised in humble circumstances but, through her work as a governess, married well at the age of eighteen. Her husband died two weeks after the wedding...
Far from the Madding Crowd was the first of Hardy's novels to apply the name of Wessex to the landscape of south-west England, and the first to gain him widespread popularity as a novelist. When the beautiful...
Little Men, or Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott, first published in 1871. The novel reprises characters from Little Women and is considered by some the second...
Become a fan on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Read the blog