Fiction Gutenberg

The Hero is a little known masterpiece of W Somerset Maugham. It is much more clinical and less romantic than his two great novels, “The Moon and Sixpence” and “The Razor’s Edge”, the latter having foretold of the mass interest in Eastern religions and metaphysics that would follow. The Hero is essentially an acerbic look at the roots of English society at...

Shirley is an 1849 social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Brontë. It was Brontë's second published novel after Jane Eyre (originally published under Brontë's pseudonym Currer Bell). The novel is set in Yorkshire in the period 1811–12, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The novel is set against a backdrop of the...

Agnes Grey is the debut novel of English author Anne Brontë, first published in December 1847, and republished in a second edition in 1850. The novel follows Agnes Grey, a governess, as she works within families of the English gentry. Scholarship and comments by Anne's sister Charlotte Brontë suggest the novel is largely based on Anne Brontë's own experiences as a governess for...

The Light That Failed is a novel by Rudyard Kipling that was first published in 1890 in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine dated January 1891. Most of the novel is set in London, but many important events throughout the story occur in Sudan or India. The Light that Failed follows the life of Dick Heldar, a painter who goes blind. A 1903 Broadway play starring Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson and his wife...

Rewards and Fairies is a historical fantasy book by Rudyard Kipling published in 1910. The title comes from the poem "Farewell, Rewards and Fairies" by Richard Corbet. The poem is referred to by the children in the first story of the preceding book Puck of Pook's Hill. Rewards and Fairies is set one year later chronologically although published four years afterwards. The book consists of a...

Persuasion is Jane Austen's last completed novel. She began it soon after she had finished Emma and completed it in August 1816. She died, at age 41, in 1817; Persuasion was published in December of that year (but dated 1818).  Persuasion is linked to Northanger Abbey not only by the fact that the two books were originally bound up in one volume...

The Story of the Gadsbys is a story by Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published as no. 2 of the Indian Railway Library in 1888. The Story of the Gadsbys is written in dramatic form, consisting of eight short scenes (listed below). This short pamphlet, of 100 pages, was later collected in book form as the second part of Soldiers Three. "Poor Dear Mamma" "The World Without" "The Tents of...

Mansfield Park is the third novel by Jane Austen, written at Chawton Cottage between February 1811 and 1813. It was published in May 1814 by Thomas Egerton, who published Jane Austen's two earlier novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. When the novel reached a second edition in 1816, its publication was taken over by John Murray, who also...

Carmen is a novella by Prosper Mérimée, written and first published in 1845. It has been adapted into a number of dramatic works, including the famous opera by Georges Bizet. The novella comprises four parts. Only the first three appeared in the original publication in the October 1, 1845 issue of the Revue des Deux Mondes (Robinson 1992); the fourth first appeared in the book...

Lady Susan is a short epistolary novel by Jane Austen, possibly written in 1794 but not published until 1871.  This epistolary novel, an early complete work that the author never submitted for publication, describes the schemes of the main character—the widowed Lady Susan—as she seeks a new husband for herself and one for her daughter. Although the...

Of Human Bondage (1915) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had originally planned to call his novel Beauty from Ashes, finally settled on a title taken from a...

The Rainbow is a 1915 novel by British author D. H. Lawrence. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family living in Nottinghamshire, particularly focusing on the individual's struggle to growth and fulfilment within the confining strictures of English social life.  The Rainbow tells the story of three generations of the Brangwen family, a dynasty of farmers and...

Mrs Craddock is a novel by William Somerset Maugham first published in 1902. Set in the final years of the 19th century, Mrs Craddock is about a young and attractive woman of independent means who marries beneath her. As he had written about a subject that was considered daring at the time, Maugham had some difficulty finding a publisher. Completed in 1900, the novel was eventually published in...

Aaron's Rod is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, started in 1917 and published in 1922.  The protagonist of this picaresque novel, Aaron Sisson, is a union official in the coal mines of the English Midlands, trapped in a stale marriage. He is also an amateur, but talented, flautist. At the start of the story he walks out on his wife and two children and decides on impulse...

Cashel Byron's Profession is George Bernard Shaw's fourth novel. The novel was written in 1882 and after rejection by several publishers it was published in serialized form in a socialist magazine. The novel was later published as a book in England and the United States. Shaw wrote five novels early in his career and then abandoned them to pursue politics, drama criticism...

The House of the Dead (Russian: Записки из Мёртвого дома, Zapiski iz Myortvogo doma) is a semi-autobiographical novelpublished in 1861 in the journal Vremyaby Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which portrays the life of convicts in a Siberianprison camp. The novel has also been published under the titles Memoirs from the House of The...

"The Canterville Ghost" is a popular short story by Oscar Wilde, widely adapted for the screen and stage. It was the first of Wilde's stories to be published, appearing in the magazine The Court and Society Review in February 1887. It was later included in a collection of short stories entitled Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories in 1891.  The...

This novel was written in the year 1880, only a few years after I had exported myself from Dublin to London in a condition of extreme rawness and inexperience concerning the specifically English side of the life with which the book pretends to deal. Everybody wrote novels then. It was my second attempt; and it shared the fate of my first. That is to say, nobody would publish it, though I tried...

Unsocial Socialist was published in 1887, having been written in 1883. The tale begins with a humorous description of student antics at a girl's school then changes focus to a seemingly uncouth laborer who, it soon develops, is really a wealthy gentleman in hiding from his overly affectionate wife. He needs the freedom gained by matrimonial truancy to promote the socialistic cause, to which...

When being forced to political marriage, she – a lovely, dreamy princess who inherently not to be acquainted with competition over the wall – suddenly disobey The King’s order riskily, deploying troops entrenched in the castle because of wishing to protect her honor. As the heart telling, he – a passionate adventurer count, not being interested of authority – who...