Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) was an author, essayist and political activist whose works addressed the complex issues of racial and social identity at the turn of the century. Chesnutt's early works explored political issues somewhat indirectly, with the intention of changing the attitudes of Caucasians slowly and carefully. His characters deal with difficult issues of miscegenation, illegitimacy, racial identity and social place. They al ...
Published in England in 1853, this social novel by Elizabeth Gaskell received controversial reviews among readers of the Victorian era because of its candid portrayal of the «fallen woman.» Ruth Hilton, an orphaned young seamstress, falls prey to the wiles of the young, wealthy and bored Henry Bellingham. The affair is short-lived when Ruth, carrying Bellingham's unborn child, is abandoned and left unemployed, homeless, and utterly without ...
"The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" is James Weldon's Johnson fictional account of a light-skinned mulatto who can pass for white. The anonymous narrator is the son of a black mother and a white father living in the early part of the 20th century in the rural south, the urban north and in Europe. The novel masterfully explores the complexity of race relations between whites and blacks in America and the search for racial identity ...
A predecessor to such monumental works as «Crime and Punishment» and «The Brothers Karamazov», «Notes From Underground» represents a turning point in Dostoyevsky's writing towards the more political side. In this work we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives withdraws from that society into the underground. A dark and politically charged novel, «Notes Fr ...
"Shirley" is Charlotte Bronte’s second novel which is set against the backdrop of the Luddite uprising against the Yorkshire textile industry in England during the industrial depression that followed the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The novel is the story of mill operator Robert Moore, whose business is troubled by the economic climate; his distant cousin Caroline Helstone, for whom Robert has affections; rich heiress and landowner ...
Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1865-1947) was a British novelist, playwright and artist whose noble Hungarian origins afforded her an idyllic childhood and extensive education in the arts at schools in Brussels, Paris and London. In 1903, with the success of a play written by Orczy and her husband based on one of her short stories about an English aristocrat, Orczy rewrote the story as a novel that drew huge sales. As a result, «The Scarlet Pimpernel» ...
"The Spoils of Poynton" is the tale of the widow Adela Gereth, an iron-willed woman of impeccable taste, and her conflicts with her son Owen over the antique furniture and art in the family home of Poynton. Told from the perspective of Fleda Vetch, a young woman caught between her love for Owen, who is engaged to another, and her concern for Mrs. Gereth. Originally serialized in «The Atlantic Monthly» in 1896 «The Spoils of Poynton» is ulti ...
First published in 1748, «Clarissa» is the long and tragic tale of the ever-virtuous Miss Clarissa Harlowe. Though her family, newly wealthy, wishes to enter the aristocracy, they can only do so by marrying Clarissa to an unrefined and loveless man. She is soon offered protection from the selfish motives of her family by Robert Lovelace, who tricks Clarissa into running away with him. Though witty and urbane, Lovelace soon proves himself a villa ...
One of the most powerful accounts of trench warfare from the WWI era, «Under Fire» recounts the experiences of the men of the French Sixth Battalion on the front lines after the German invasion. Compiled from diaries he had written on the front from 1914-1915, and completed in the hospital while recovering from injuries, Barbusse published his work in both serial and novel forms in late 1916. By the end of the war it was a world-wide bestseller, ...
