French novelist and short story writer, Gustave Flaubert, was considered to be a master of style, obsessively devoted to finding the right word in every piece of literature he produced. As a child he expressed great imagination and took in all the stories he could from his nurse and neighbors, and in doing so, he prepared himself for a life consumed by literature and history. In addition to his “Madame Bovary”, his first published novel and the ...
Honore de Balzac “Cousin Bette” is generally considered to be one of the writer’s most famous novels, his last great work before his death. It is a classic novel of revenge, passion, and vices. Along with her friend Valerie, the title character Bette strategizes for the overwhelming destruction of men in general and her cousin-in-law Baron Hector Hulot specifically. Hulot sacrifices his family and fortune on a series of extramarital seductions, ...
D. H. Lawrence’s controversial 1915 novel “The Rainbow” is the story of three generations of the Brangwen family. While it may be considered tame by today’s standards, due to its frank treatment of human sexuality, “The Rainbow” was banned and Lawrence was prosecuted on an obscenity charge in England when it was first published. The novel follows the lives and loves of the Brangwen family in the Midlands of England, at the borders of Nottinghams ...
Orlando, first published in 1928, is a high-spirited romp inspired by the tumultuous family history of Woolf's partner, the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, it is arguably one of Woolf's most popular and accessible novels: a history of English literature in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary h ...
"Black Mischief" was Evelyn Waugh's third novel, published in 1932. The novel chronicles the efforts of the English-educated Emperor Seth, assisted by a fellow Oxford graduate, Basil Seal, to modernize his Empire, the fictional African island of Azania, located in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Africa.<P> Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (1903–1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books. He was al ...
"Robinson Crusoe" relates the story of a man's shipwreck on a desert island for 28 years and his subsequent adventures. Throughout its episodic narrative, Crusoe's struggles with faith are apparent as he bargains with God in times of life-threatening crises, but time and again he turns his back after his deliverances. He is finally content with his lot in life, separated from society, following a more genuine conversion experience ...
Babbitt (1922), by Sinclair Lewis, is a satirical novel about American culture and society that critiques the vacuity of middle-class life and the social pressure toward conformity. The controversy provoked by Babbitt was influential in the decision to award the Nobel Prize in literature to Lewis in 1930. ...
Arrowsmith tells the story of bright and scientifically minded Martin Arrowsmith as he makes his way from a small town in the Midwest to the upper echelons of the scientific community. First published in 1925, it won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize (which Lewis declined). ...
"Master Bernard is a historical novel which reflects what actually happened during the terrible religious wars between the Roman Catholics and the Huguenots (Calvinist Protestants) in France during the second half of the 16th century. The principal character is a real person: Bernard Palissy, master potter, craftsman, writer, researcher and lecturer who lived from 1510 to 1589. Many of his glazed pottery masterpieces can be found today in t ...
