Tolstoy’s Tragic Heroine Still Haunts Us: Anna Karenina
It begins with one of the most famous lines in literature: “All happy families are alike;…
Revolution, Redemption, and the Reckoning of Conscience: A Tale of Two Cities
Few opening lines in literature are as well-known—or as dramatically contradictory—as “It was the best of…
In War and Words, A Farce of Headlines and Hysteria: Scoop
In Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, journalism is not the noble pursuit of truth, but a circus of…
Behind the Walls, A Garden Blooms and So Does the Human Heart: The Secret Garden
There is a quiet magic to The Secret Garden—not of spells or fairy dust, but of…
Silas Marner and the Grace of Everyday Life
First published in 1861, Silas Marner was, in George Eliot’s own words, “a story of old-fashioned…
The Enduring Sharpness of English Novel ‘Sense and Sensibility’
Consider the early English novel. So often, it is hemmed in by the constraints of its…
The Rise and Decline of a Family’s Pride: Buddenbrooks
By the time Thomas Mann finished Buddenbrooks at the age of 25, he had already captured…
Faith, Doubt, and the Weight of the Soul: The Brothers Karamazov
Few novels demand as much from their readers—or reward them so richly—as Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers…
A Journey Worth Taking: The Lord of the Rings
In an age of fractured attention spans and fast-moving entertainment, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the…
Love, Desire, and the Breaking of Vows: Lady Chatterley’s Lover
When Lady Chatterley’s Lover was first published unabridged in the United Kingdom in 1960, it quickly…
