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The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel written by French author Alexandre Dumas (père) completed in 1844. It is one of the author's most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers. Like many of his novels, it was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet.
The story takes place in France, Italy, and islands in the Mediterranean during the historical events...
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The Man in the Iron Mask is the name given to an unidentified prisoner who was arrested in 1669 or 1670 and subsequently held in a number of French prisons, including the Bastille and the Fortress of Pignerol (modern Pinerolo, Italy). Recent research suggests that his name might have been "Eustache Dauger", but this still has not been completely proven. He was held in the custody of the same jailer, Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, for a period of...
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One of the major works of fiction written during the twentieth century, D. H. Lawrence's last novel is an erotic celebration of life. Described by the New York Times as "our time's most significant romance," the controversial book was banned, burned, and the subject of a landmark obscenity trial. Printed privately in Florence in 1928, it was not published in Great Britain until 1960, after having long scandalized society with its sexually explicit...
4) Middlemarch
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"Middlemarch" is writer George Eliot's crowning literary achievement and the novel is considered by many critics to be one of the finest pieces of fiction ever written.
Written in the style of "realism" popular at the time, it is a study of the class and social structure of the fictional town of Middlemarch in central England and the story touches on all segments of life within the village, from the landed gentry to the working class and everyone...
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The Golden Bowl comes in the first years of the 20th-century: the publisher, Charles Scribner's Sons, decided never to serialise it and published it in New York in December 1904 in two volumes. After just a few months, in February 1905, also Methuen published the novel in London in a one-volume edition.
In 1909, a revised edition appeared as volumes 23 and 24 of the New York edition, and James this time also prepared the preface, in which he reflected...
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Oliver Goldsmith's 18th century novel "The Vicar of Wakefield" was so popular in Victorian times that it is mentioned in many classics of that era including George Eliot's "Middlemarch," Jane Austen's "Emma," Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", amongst others. It is the story of Dr. Charles Primrose, the titular Vicar, his wife Deborah and their six children who live an idyllic life in a country parish. The Vicar...
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Originally published as a serial story, Wives and Daughters is told with an episodic narrative, following a young woman named Molly Gibson as she comes of age. Molly is the only child of a widowed doctor. Raised in an English provincial town, Molly's childhood is filled with trips to aristocratic mansions and bonding experiences with her father. As she grows older however, men become more interested in her because of her attractive appearance. When...
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Chronicles of Barsetshire volume 2
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Barchester Towers is the second novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". Among other things it satirises the then raging antipathy in the Church of England between High Church and Evangelical adherents. Barchester Towers concerns the leading clergy of the cathedral city of Barchester. The much loved bishop having died, all expectations are that his son, Archdeacon Grantly, will succeed him. Instead, owing to the...
9) Shirley
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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within as on the state of things without and around us.' Considered one of her less well-known novels, Shirley is Charlotte Brontë's only historical work, set during the Napoleonic Wars. Wealthy and independent, Shirley is very different from her friend Caroline who has few...
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The Trumpet-Major is a novel by Thomas Hardy published in 1880, and his only historical novel. It concerns the heroine, Anne Garland, being pursued by three suitors: John Loveday, the eponymous trumpet major in a British regiment, honest and loyal; his brother Bob, a flighty sailor; and Festus Derriman, the cowardly nephew of the local squire. Unusually for a Hardy novel, the ending is not entirely tragic; however, there remains an ominous element...
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"The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" is the second and final novel by the English author Anne Brontë. It was first published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Probably the most shocking of the Brontës' novels, it had an instant and phenomenal success, but after Anne's death her sister Charlotte prevented its re-publication. The novel is framed as a series of letters from Gilbert Markham to his friend and brother-in-law about the events leading to...
12) Villette
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Lucy Snowe flees England and the memory of childhood tragedies, to become a teacher in a French boarding school in the town of Villette.
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In Baroness Emma Orczy's 1905 novel "The Scarlet Pimpernel", the year is 1792 and the French Revolution is complete. People die by the guillotine every day, often unjustly. Stepping in to right these wrongs and rescue the innocent is the elusive "Scarlet Pimpernel", a mysterious agent named for the red flower that is his signature. Meanwhile, foppish Sir Percy Blakeney and his French actress wife Marguerite are having marital difficulties when Marguerite...
14) Romola
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The celebrated Victorian author of Middlemarch explores the turbulent world of Florence during the Italian Renaissance in this sweeping historical novel.
Florence, 1492. Lorenzo de Medici has just died, leaving governance of the Florentine Republic to his son Piero, an unskilled ruler. Meanwhile, Tito Melema, a shipwrecked stranger, finds love with a young woman named Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar. Though her brother has a vision...
15) Hard Times
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Set in an industrial city in Northern England during the Victorian era, Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy and retired man, devotes his life to the rationalist philosophy, and raises his children, Louisa and Tom, to never engage in any imaginative activity. The two grow up feeling confused, like something is missing in their lives, yet are unable figure out what exactly that is and affected differently by their upbringing. Louisa struggles to feel joy, and...
16) Cousin Bette
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Cousin Bette (1846) is a novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. Part of Balzac's La Comédie humaine sequence, the novel is recognized as being the author's last fully-realized work, and features several characters who appear elsewhere throughout his legendary series. It has inspired several film and television adaptations, as well as earned comparisons to Shakespeare's Othello and Tolstoy's War and Peace.
The novel focuses on the life and exploits...
17) Women in Love
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"D.H. Lawrence's 'Women in Love' is a profound exploration of relationships and human psyche set against the backdrop of early 20th century England. This sequel to 'The Rainbow' continues the story of the Brangwen sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, as they navigate complex emotional landscapes in their respective relationships.
Gudrun, an artist, enters a turbulent and ultimately destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist, while Ursula,...
18) Basil
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Basil (1852) is a novel by Wilkie Collins. Written in the aftermath of Antonina (1850), his successful debut, Basil finds the author honing the trademark sense of mystery and psychological unease that would make him a household name around the world. Recognized as an important Victorian novelist and pioneer of detective fiction, Wilkie Collins was a writer with a gift for thoughtful entertainment, stories written for a popular audience that continue...
19) Tom Jones
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When Squire Allworthy returns from London to discover a sleeping baby of unknown parentage in his bed, Tom Jones makes its rollicking start toward a picaresque journey across eighteenth-century England. Its foundling hero, having grown to young manhood and developed a passion for the girl next door, finds himself banished from the squire's country estate by the contrivance of a romantic rival. Lusty, good-hearted Tom is thus compelled to seek his...
20) Germinal
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Originally published in serial form in 1884 to 1885, "Germinal" is Émile Zola's realistic depiction of the coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s. In this faithful translation from the original French by Havelock Ellis, the story centers on Étienne Lantier, a young migrant worker who arrives at the coalmining town of Montsou in search of work. Set against a backdrop of extreme poverty and oppression, "Germinal" is the story of the idealistic...
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