This was the first of Hardy’s major works and his first major success, set in a pastoral setting and centered on the yearnings of a farmer-shepherd after the lively and independent farm-owner heroine Bethsheeba.
The novel has a huge amount of local colour, with a full set of country characters whose vernacular and often quite comical conversations and doings take up a considerable amount of the story, and its many dramatic countryside dramas do indeed tend to get the reader away from the (…)
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"Far From the Madding Crowd" by Thomas Hardy (1874)
17 mai 2023, par Thomas Hardy -
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"The Eustache Diamonds" by Anthony Trollope (1870)
10 mai 2023, par Anthony TrollopeOne of Trollope’s best-known novels, beautifully delivered in his unmatchable, elegant and precise prose. The mess that Lady Eustace gets into with her fabulous diamonds provides T. with the framework for an examination of the mores and morals of the increasingly-crass society of his day that (of course) keeps the reader well engaged from start to end. The charm of his Barchester Towers is less present in this sharper social saga, but it is certainly another excellent example of Trollope’s (…)
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"The Last Chronicle of Barset" by Anthony Trollope (1867)
6 mai 2023, par Anthony TrollopeThis was the sixth and longest and last novel in Trollop’s Barsetshire series, that began with the excellent The Warden and continued with his wonderful masterpiece, Barchester Towers. Surprise and delight, this final and most sober work in the series, on the quite eternal themes of honour and dishonour, of honesty and integrity and social opprobrium, of pride, poverty and self-respect, rises to the glorious heights of Barchester Towers thanks to the sparkle of Trollope’s prose, to his gift (…)
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"The Mill on the Floss" by George Eliot (1860)
3 mai 2023, par George EliotThe most dramatic of all George Eliot’s novels (that quite unforgettable final scene !), this was her second novel, published when she was 40, so there’s nothing juvenile in the writing or plot, concentrated on the heroine’s intense relationships with three men (her brother, her suitable suitor, and her unsuitable lover). It is less intellectualising than the later Middlemarch (1872) but retains the country setting and nature-centred flavour of Adam Bede, written the previous year (she may (…)
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"The Love Song of the Tomcat Murr" by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1821)
30 avril 2023, par E. T. A. HoffmannThe account of his love affair with the lovely Miesmies by the very gifted tomcat Murr, who had been taught to read and write by his erudite master and who had then proceeded to write his autobiography, including this most delightful episode from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s wonderful masterwork “The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1821).”
(2,400 words)
Translated specially for this site.
An e-book, with the original text in an annex, is available for downloading below.
The original text (…) -
"Barchester Towers" by Anthony Trollope (1857)
29 avril 2023, par Anthony TrollopeAn enchanting story of strife in the hierarchy of the established church in a glorious, ancient and utterly civilized corner of south England baptised Barchester.
A story that subtly is saying things about tolerance and justice and openness to men’s hearts and the virtues of kindness and understanding in an increasingly harsh, competitive, strife-ridden world. And in the most easy and natural prose one can imagine, constantly underpinned with a sense of humour and whimsy at the foibles of (…) -
"Moby Dick" by Herman Melville (1850)
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Melville (…) -
"Twice-Told Tales" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1837)
22 avril 2023, par Nathaniel HawthorneThe first book published by the future author of The Scarlet Letter, a collection of stories that had previously appeared in various New England newspapers, all evoking the past epochs of that English colony, all with a tinge of the occult and the mysterious, and just about all with a quite passionate anger at the rigidities and injustices of the rigorous Puritan mentality that was so characteristic of that colony and that was still somewhat present in later times there.
A precious and (…) -
"The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
19 avril 2023, par Nathaniel HawthorneA classic account of the parochial puritanism in pioneer pre-revolutionary America, a powerful portrayal of the practically-irresistible pressure that dominant social attitudes infused with religious intolerance exercise on the individual and the personal tragedies that they entail.
A moving tale that’s as relevant today as ever.
(84,000 words)
An e-book is available for downloading below
Nathaniel Hawthorne aged 36
portrait by Charles Osgood CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Prison-Door (…)