Jane Eyre (originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by English writer Charlotte Bronte. It was published on 16 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London, England, under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York.

Primarily of the bildungsroman genre, Jane Eyre follows the emotions and experiences of its eponymous character, including her growth to adulthood, and her love for Mr. Rochester, the byronic master of fictitious Thornfield Hall. In its internalisation of the action - the focus...

Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Bronte, written between October 1845 and June 1846, and published in 1847 under thepseudonym "Ellis Bell." It was her first and only published novel: she died aged 30 the following year. The decision to publish came after the success of her sister Charlotte's novel, Jane Eyre. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited the manuscript of Wuthering Heights, and arranged for the edited version to be published as a posthumous second edition in 1850.

Wuthering Heights is the eponymous farmhouse on the Yorkshire moors where the story unfolds. Its core theme is...

The Wings of the Dove is a 1902 novel by Henry James. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her effect on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honorable motives, while others are more self-interested.
Literary significance and criticism
The Wings of the Dove has one of the strongest critical positions of any of James' works, although James himself sometimes expressed dissatisfaction with it. In his preface to the New York Edition, James spent much time confessing to supposed faults in the...

Hard Times - For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book appraises English society and is aimed at highlighting the social and economic pressures of the times.
Literary significance & criticism
Critics have had a diverse range of opinions on the novel. The critic John Ruskin declared Hard Times to be his favourite Dickens work due to its exploration of important social questions. However, Thomas Macaulay branded it "sullen socialism," on the grounds that Dickens did not fully comprehend the politics of the...

"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."
Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

"The Canterville Ghost" is a popular short story by Oscar Wilde, widely adapted for the screen and stage. It was the first of Wilde's stories to be published, appearing in the magazine The Court and Society Review in February 1887. It was later included in a collection of short stories entitled Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other...

..".though she had not had the strength to shake off the spell that bound her to him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, and seemed to herself to be passively awaiting a fate she could not avert."
Edith Wharton, Summer
Summer is a novel by Edith Wharton published in 1917 by Charles Scribner's Sons. The story is one of only two novels to be set in New England by Wharton, who was best known for her portrayals of upper-class New York society. The novel details the sexual awakening of its protagonist, Charity Royall, and her cruel treatment by the father of her child, and shares...

"Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates."
--- Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Life on the Mississippi (1883) is a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War, and also a travel book, recounting his trip along the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans many years after the War.
The book begins with a brief history of the river as reported by Europeans and Americans, beginning with the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1542. It continues with anecdotes...

A Room with a View is a 1908 novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman in the repressed culture of Edwardian era England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. Merchant-Ivory produced an award-winning film adaptation in 1985.
The Modern Library ranked A Room with a View 79th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century (1998).
Major themes
The main themes of this novel include repressed sexuality, freedom from institutional religion,...

"Wit is well-bred insolence."
- Aristotle, Rhetoric
Aristotle's Rhetoric is an ancient Greek treatise on the art of persuasion, dating from the 4th century BC. The English title varies: typically it is titled Rhetoric, the Art of Rhetoric, or a Treatise on Rhetoric.
Aristotle is generally credited with developing the basics of the system of rhetoric that "thereafter served as its touchstone," influencing the development of rhetorical theory from ancient through modern times. The Rhetoric is regarded by most rhetoricians as "the most important single work on persuasion ever...

"A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer."
--- George MacDonald, Lilith
Lilith is a fantasy novel written by Scottish writer George MacDonald and first published in 1895. Its importance was recognized in its later revival in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fifth volume of the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in September 1969.
Lilith is considered among the darkest of MacDonald's works, and among the most profound. It is a story concerning the nature of life, death, and salvation. In the story, MacDonald mentions a cosmic sleep that...