Masterpieces of the masters of fiction

A short time ago I determined that instead of taking up any new works of fiction I would go over the masterpieces which I had read long since and see what changes time had made...

Then, too, the long episodes, the story of Cardenio, the tale of the captive and of Impertinent Curiosity, would be better told as separate narratives rather than as parts of a...

Much of his satire was meant to set off certain follies of his own time, but to us the most valuable part of it is that which portrays the general frailties of humanity. He hold...

While the story as a whole is a wild phantasmagoria, calling to mind the works of Rabelais by its grossness and inextricable confusion, it contains also, like “Gargantua,” passa...

Nothing that is planted ever seems to fail. The flowers are abundant, but somehow they seem like manufactured flowers. Even their perfume suggests rather the pharmacy than the f...

The Knight Huldbrand meets her in the guise of a young girl at the cottage of a fisherman by whom she had been brought up as a daughter. Beautiful, wayward, mischievous, she fal...

Renzo reaches Milan at the time of the breaking out of the bread riots, due to the prevailing famine. The looting and destruction of one of the bake-houses is vividly described,...

“It was well for Lucia that she was not the only one to whom Donna Prassede had to do good.... Besides the rest of the family, all of whom were persons more or less needing amen...

But as a whole the work has no such convincing power over me to-day as it had when I first read it. Some of the characters, indeed, like little Miss Mowcher, Barkis, and Mr. Cre...

“Seeing the great and undeniable likeness between this portrait and the lad, the new viscountess, who had still hold of the boy’s hand as she looked at the picture, blushed and...

“His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where there were parties of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness and wit; but there existed such a perfect confidence in...

When the winter comes and the flocks on the mountains descend to the valleys, Ekkehard leaves his hermitage, and passing, on his way to distant parts, the castle which had witne...

One of the stories told in this novel seems too good to have been wholly an invention of the novelist. It is the story of the poor _curé_ who was summoned before his bishop for...

“Romola” is a work not addressed to the great mass of mankind, but to the student. It presupposes considerable knowledge on the part of the reader of Italian names, customs, and...

The shattering of an ideal by a single word of disparagement is thus shown when a young girl hears from her father that the pious Madame Stahl, whom she had idolized, kept her b...

“His surprise was great to find this charming and poetic Kitty, thinking, planning, taking charge of the linen, the furniture, the mattresses, the table service, the kitchen. Th...