Jane Eyre (originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published on 16 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London, England, under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Primarily of the bildungsroman genre, Jane Eyre follows the emotions...

Villette is an 1853 novel by Charlotte Brontë. After an unspecified family disaster, the protagonist Lucy Snowe travels from England to the fictional French-speaking city of Villette to teach at a girls' school, where she is drawn into adventure and romance. Villette was Charlotte Brontë's fourth novel. It was preceded by the posthumously published The Professor, her first, and then by...

The White Peacock is a novel by D. H. Lawrence published in 1911. Lawrence started the novel in 1906 and then rewrote it three times. The early versions had the working title of Laetitia. Maurice Greiffenhagen (1862-1931)'s 1891 painting, 'An Idyll', inspired D H Lawrence's novel The White Peacock. The painting had "a profound effect" on the author, who wrote: "As for Greiffenhagen's 'Idyll', it...

The present book is a continuation from "Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious." The generality of readers had better just leave it alone. The generality of critics likewise. I really don't want to convince anybody. It is quite in opposition to my whole nature. I don't intend my books for the generality of readers. I count it a mistake of our mistaken democracy, that every man who can read print is...

The Lost Girl is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1920. It was awarded the 1920 James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the fiction category. Lawrence started it shortly after writing Women in Love, and worked on it only sporadically until he completed it in 1920.  Alvina Houghton, the daughter of a widowed Midlands draper, comes of age just as her...

Women in Love is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence published in 1920. It is a sequel to his earlier novel The Rainbow(1915), and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist. Lawrence contrasts this pair with the love that develops...

Sons and Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. The Modern Library placed it ninth on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. While the novel initially incited a lukewarm critical reception, along with allegations of obscenity, it is today regarded as a masterpiece by many critics and is often regarded as Lawrence's finest achievement.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish author, playwright and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of...

I was advised on all hands not to write this book, and some English friends who have read it urge me not to publish it.  "You will be accused of selecting the subject," they say, "because sexual viciousness appeals to you, and your method of treatment lays you open to attack. "You criticise and condemn the English conception of justice, and English legal methods: you even question the...

Wilde’s literary reputation has survived so much that I think it proof against any exhumation of articles which he or his admirers would have preferred to forget. As a matter of fact, I believe this volume will prove of unusual interest; some of the reviews are curiously prophetic; some are, of course, biassed by prejudice hostile or friendly; others are conceived in the author’s...

Poor Folk (Russian: Бедные люди, Bednye Lyudi), sometimes translated as Poor People, is the first novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, written over the span of nine months between 1844 and 1845. Dostoyevsky was in financial difficulty because of his extravagant living and his developing gambling addiction; although he had produced some translations of...

Demons (Russian: Бесы, Bésy) is an anti-nihilistic novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in the journal The Russian Messenger in 1871-2. Although titled The Possessed in the initial English translation, Dostoyevsky scholars and later translations favour the titles The Devils or Demons. An extremely political book, Demons is a testimonial of life in Imperial Russia in the late...

Notes from Underground (Russian: Записки из подполья, Zapiski iz podpol'ya), also translated as Notes from the Undergroundor Letters from the Underworld, is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the firstexistentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a...

The eleven papers which are collected here were written between 1899 and 1905. With the exception of one, entitled "Aspects of Shakespeare's Philosophy," which is now printed for the first time, they were published in periodicals in the course of those six years. The articles treat of varied aspects of Shakespearean drama, its influences and traditions, but I think that all may be credited...

This work starts with an Introduction by J.H. Stape, St Mary's University College, Strawberry Hill. First published in 1909, "The Man Shakespeare and his Tragic Life" is a lively biography of England and arguably the world's greatest playwright and poet by an ardent admirer. Pursuing the thesis that a man so elusive in the few surviving documents is found full blown in very one of his works,...

Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio. Whilst various arguments support that Shakespeare is the sole author of the play (notably DelVecchio and Hammond's Cambridge edition of the...

The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. The Windsor of the play's title is a reference to Windsor Castle in Berkshire, England, and though nominally set in the reign of Henry IV, the play makes no pretence to exist outside contemporary Elizabethan era English...

Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. Originally published in the First Folio of 1623, where it was listed as a comedy, the play's first recorded performance occurred in 1604. The play's main themes include justice, "mortality and mercy in Vienna," and the dichotomy between corruption and purity: "some rise by sin,...

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedic play by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599, as Shakespeare was approaching the middle of his career. The play was included in the First Folio, published in 1623. Much Ado About Nothing is generally considered one of Shakespeare's best comedies, because it combines elements of robust hilarity with more...

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded...