18th Century Novel

Samuel Richardson
Bibliography-

 Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740–1761)

 Pamela in her Exalted Condition (1741–1761) – the sequel to
Pamela, usually published together in 4 Volumes – revised
through 14 editions
 Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady (1747–61) – revised
through 4 editions
o Letters and Passages Restored to Clarissa (1751)

 The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753–1761) – restored and

corrected through 4 editions
 The History of Mrs. Beaumont – A Fragment – unfinished

Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded

 An epistolary novel (1740) considered as one of the first true

English novels.
 Plot divided in 2 Volumes
 Richardson attempted to both instruct and entertain; he
wrote Pamela as a conduct book.
 Pamela has significant similarities to the famous Persian tragic
romance of Khosrow and Shirin by the Persian poet Nizami
Ganjavi.
 Pamela Andrews is a 15-year-old servant. On the death of her
mistress, her mistress’s son, “Mr. B,” begins a series of
stratagems designed to seduce her. These failing, he abducts
her and ultimately threatens to rape her.
 Pamela resists, and soon afterward Mr. B offers marriage—an
outcome that Richardson presents as a reward for her virtue.
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  The second half of the novel shows Pamela winning over those
who had disapproved of the misalliance.

Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady: Comprehending the Most

Important Concerns of Private Life. And Particularly Shewing, the
Distresses that May Attend the Misconduct Both of Parents and
Children, In Relation to Marriage
 An epistolary novel published in 1748.
 Harold Bloom cites it as one of his favourite novels that he
"tend[s] to re-read every year or so".
 The novel’s main body consists of the letters of Clarissa
Harlowe and her seducer, Lovelace, though there are many
more correspondents throughout the novel.
 Clarissa, a young woman who expects to marry well, is gravely
disappointed by her parents’ choice of suitor. The extremely
wealthy, though ugly, Solmes is not Clarissa’s idea of a good
match. Instead she is drawn to a man who is as dashing and
fashionable as he is lacking in moral character.
 He casts himself as Clarissa’s rescuer from her intended and
dreaded marriage by whisking her off to the apparent safety
and anonymity of London.
 With Clarissa now isolated from her family and friends in the
city, Lovelace is free to force his intentions upon her, despite
her attempts to resist him.
 In Lovelace’s letters to his friend Belford, Richardson shows
that what really drives his character to conquest and finally
to rape is revenge for her family’s insults and his sense of
Clarissa’s moral superiority.
 Neither recovers: Clarissa suffers temporary insanity, while
Lovelace, sick with guilt, is killed in a duel.

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The History of Sir Charles Grandison
 An epistolary novel first published in February 1753. Published
in seven volumes in 1754.
 The book was a response to Henry Fielding's The History of Tom
Jones, a Foundling, which parodied the morals presented in
Richardson's previous novels.
 Sir Walter Scott wrote a "Prefatory Memoir to Richardson" in
The Novels of Samuel Richardson (1824)
 The work was his last completed novel, and it anticipated
the novel of manners of such authors as Jane Austen.
 Sir Charles rescues the honourable Harriet Byron as she is
kidnapped by Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, her suitor.
 The rest of the novel traces the love story between Grandison
and Byron.

Henry Fielding
Bibliography-

 Shamela – novella, 1741

 The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend,
Mr. Abraham Adams – 1742
 The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild, the Great – 1743, ironic
treatment of Jonathan Wild, a notorious underworld figure of the
time. Published as Volume 3 of Miscellanies
 The Female Husband or the Surprising History of Mrs Mary alias
Mr George Hamilton, who was convicted of having married a
young woman of Wells and lived with her as her husband, taken
from her own mouth since her confinement – pamphlet,
fictionalized report, 1746
 The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling – 1749
 A Journey from this World to the Next – 1749
 Amelia – 1751

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An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, or Shamela
 A satirical burlesque novella, a direct attack on Pamela
 It was first published in April 1741 under the name of Mr.
Conny Keyber.
 In Fielding’s parody, Shamela becomes a conniving and
scheming woman who ensnares a wealthy man into an
unhappy marriage.
 Shamela has themes of sexual hypocrisy, corruption, and
pretentious writing styles and authors.
 Conveyed in the form of letters (an epistolary novel).
 Along with ridiculing Richardson, Shamela satirizes Conyers
Middleton’s Life of Cicero, which was dedicated to the British
Prime Minister, and a memoir by the opportunistic stage
manager-actor, Colley Cibber, whose memoir was full of typos.

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 18th Century Novel- 2

The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend

Mr. Abraham Adams
 Was the first full-length novel by Henry Fielding
 Published in 1742
 A "comic epic poem in prose"
 Fielding portrayed Joseph Andrews as the brother of Pamela
Andrews, the heroine of Richardson’s novel.
 Written "in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, the author
of Don Quixote"
 Genre: mix of the mock-heroic and neoclassical
 Plot is divided in 4 Books
 Joseph Andrews, a stage adaptation of the first and fourth
books of the novel, was written by Samuel Jackson Pratt at
the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. (The role of Fanny was played
by Mary Robinson).
 At its centre is Parson Adams, one of the great comic figures of
literature. Joseph and the parson have a series of adventures,
in all of which they manage to expose the hypocrisy and
affectation of others through their own innocence and
guilelessness.
 the main characters embark on a journey full of slapstick
comedy and meet several upper- and lower-class characters
along the way. As Joseph Andrews and Parson Adams journey
from London to their country town, they face robbers, rude
inn owners, sexual temptations, and false kindness from the
upper class, all while maintaining their Christian virtue and
charity.

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  Other characters- Lady Booby, the wife of squire Sir Thomas
Booby; Fanny Goodwill, a milkmaid and Joseph’s childhood
sweetheart; Mr. Trulliber, the local clergyman.

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

 A Bildungsroman and a picaresque novel.
 First published in 1749
 It is the earliest novel mentioned by W. Somerset Maugham in
his 1948 book Great Novelists and Their Novels among the ten
best novels of the world.
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued that it has one of the "three
most perfect plots ever planned", alongside Oedipus
Tyrannus and The Alchemist.
 Plot is spread in 18 Books
 Purpose: to explore "human nature”
 Each book begins with a prefatory chapter directly addressing
the reader, and the narrator provides a continuous
commentary on characters and events.
 The novel presents a panorama of contemporary British life,
drawing characters from many different classes and
occupations.
 The main theme of the novel is the contrast between Tom
Jones's good nature, flawed but eventually corrected by his
love for virtuous Sophia Western, and his half-brother
Blifil's hypocrisy.
 Secondary themes include several other examples of virtue
(especially that of Squire Allworthy), hypocrisy (especially that
of Thwackum) and villainy (for example, that of Mrs Western
and Ensign Northerton), sometimes tempered by repentance
(for instance Square and Mrs Waters née Jones).

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  The novel takes place against the backdrop of the Jacobite
rising of 1745. Characters take different sides over the
rebellion, which was an attempt to restore Roman
Catholicism as the established religion of England.
 The book was made into the 1963 film Tom Jones written
by John Osborne, directed by Tony Richardson.


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 18th Century Novels 3

Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By

Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several
Ships
 Published anonymously in 1726
 Prose satire/ political satire (King George I)
 A parody of the then popular travel narrative and on human
characteristics and idiosyncrasies.
 The book is written in the first person from the point of view of
Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon and sea captain who visits remote
regions of the world, and it describes four adventures.
 ‘Gulliver’ announces, in a letter prefixed to the novel, that he
has only allowed his story to be published under great
pressure, and he denies any suggestion that it is ‘a mere fiction
out of mine own brain’.
 In this preface he also issues several corrections and
clarifications to the narrative. Gulliver carries this fussiness over
into his assessment of the various cultures and individuals he
becomes acquainted with on his travels.
 Swift’s book is a satirical commentary on his own society’s
fascination with travel and exploration – riffing, in particular,
on the pious optimism of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe,
which had been published seven years earlier – but it also
fantastically magnifies, diminishes, twists and inverts many
‘ordinary’ features of human life, in ways that are ultimately
hilarious, scathing and remarkably humane.
 Gulliver's Travels has several themes, but the primary ones are
the question of physical power versus moral righteousness,
individualism versus communal society, and deception versus

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 honesty. He does not provide clear answers to each of these
issues but instead presents the benefits and dangers of each.
 Book I: When the ship Gulliver is traveling on is destroyed in a
storm, Gulliver ends up on the island of Lilliput, where he
awakes to find that he has been captured by Lilliputians, very
small people — approximately six inches in height. Gulliver is
treated with compassion and concern. In turn, he helps them
solve some of their problems, especially their conflict with their
enemy, Blefuscu, an island across the bay from them. Gulliver
falls from favor, however, because he refuses to support the
Emperor's desire to enslave the Blefuscudians and because he
"makes water" to put out a palace fire. Gulliver flees to
Blefuscu, where he converts a large war ship to his own use and
sets sail from Blefuscu eventually to be rescued at sea by an
English merchant ship and returned to his home in England.
 Book II: As he travels as a ship's surgeon, Gulliver and a small
crew are sent to find water on an island. Instead they
encounter a land of giants. As the crew flees, Gulliver is left
behind and captured. Gulliver's captor, a farmer, takes him to
the farmer's home where Gulliver is treated kindly, but, of
course, curiously. The farmer assigns his daughter,
Glumdalclitch, to be Gulliver's keeper, and she cares for
Gulliver with great compassion. The farmer takes Gulliver on
tour across the countryside, displaying him to onlookers.
Eventually, the farmer sells Gulliver to the Queen. At court,
Gulliver meets the King, and the two spend many sessions
discussing the customs and behaviors of Gulliver's country. In
many cases, the King is shocked and chagrined by the
selfishness and pettiness that he hears Gulliver describe.
Gulliver, on the other hand, defends England.
 One day, on the beach, as Gulliver looks longingly at the sea
from his box (portable room), he is snatched up by an eagle and

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 eventually dropped into the sea. A passing ship spots the
floating chest and rescues Gulliver, eventually returning him to
England and his family.
 Book III: Gulliver is on a ship bound for the Levant. After
arriving, Gulliver is assigned captain of a sloop to visit nearby
islands and establish trade. On this trip, pirates attack the sloop
and place Gulliver in a small boat to fend for himself. While
drifting at sea, Gulliver discovers a Flying Island. While on the
Flying Island, called Laputa, Gulliver meets several inhabitants,
including the King. All are preoccupied with things associated
with mathematics and music. In addition, astronomers use the
laws of magnetism to move the island up, down, forward,
backward, and sideways, thus controlling the island's
movements in relation to the island below (Balnibarbi). While
in this land, Gulliver visits Balnibarbi, the island of
Glubbdubdrib, and Luggnagg. Gulliver finally arrives in Japan
where he meets the Japanese emperor. From there, he goes to
Amsterdam and eventually home to England.
 Book IV: While Gulliver is captain of a merchant ship bound for
Barbados and the Leeward Islands, several of his crew become
ill and die on the voyage. Gulliver hires several replacement
sailors in Barbados. These replacements turn out to be pirates
who convince the other crew members to mutiny. As a result,
Gulliver is deposited on a "strand" (an island) to fend for
himself. Almost immediately, he is discovered by a herd of ugly,
despicable human-like creatures who are called, he later learns,
Yahoos. They attack him by climbing trees and defecating on
him. He is saved from this disgrace by the appearance of a
horse, identified, he later learns, by the name Houyhnhnm. The
grey horse (a Houyhnhnm) takes Gulliver to his home, where he
is introduced to the grey's mare (wife), a colt and a foal
(children), and a sorrel nag (the servant). Gulliver also sees that
the Yahoos are kept in pens away from the house. It becomes
immediately clear that, except for Gulliver's clothing, he and

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 the Yahoos are the same animal. From this point on, Gulliver
and his master (the grey) begin a series of discussions about
the evolution of Yahoos, about topics, concepts, and behaviors
related to the Yahoo society, which Gulliver represents, and
about the society of the Houyhnhnms.
 Despite his favored treatment in the grey steed's home, the
kingdom's Assembly determines that Gulliver is a Yahoo and
must either live with the uncivilized Yahoos or return to his
own world. With great sadness, Gulliver takes his leave of the
Houyhnhnms. He builds a canoe and sails to a nearby island
where he is eventually found hiding by a crew from a
Portuguese ship. The ship's captain returns Gulliver to Lisbon,
where he lives in the captain's home. Gulliver is so repelled by
the sight and smell of these "civilized Yahoos" that he can't
stand to be around them. Eventually, however, Gulliver agrees
to return to his family in England. Upon his arrival, he is
repelled by his Yahoo family, so he buys two horses and spends
most of his days caring for and conversing with the horses in
the stable in order to be as far away from his Yahoo family as
possible.

The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of

York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, All Alone in an
Un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the
Great River of Oroonoque; Having Been Cast on Shore by
Shipwreck, Wherein All the Men Perished but Himself. With an
Account how he was at last as Strangely Deliver’d by Pyrates.
Written by Himself.
 Published in 1719
 Key words: Epistolary, confessional, autobiographical
and didactic

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  The book can also be considered a spiritual autobiography as
Crusoe's views on religion change dramatically from the start of
his story to the end.
 The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander
Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific
island called "Más a Tierra" (now part of Chile) which was
renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966.
 Other sources: Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, An Historical
Relation of the Island Ceylon by Robert Knox and sixteenth-
century Spanish sailor’s, Pedro Serrano, accounts.
 Before the end of the year, this first volume had run through
four editions.
 The term "Robinsonade" was coined to describe the genre of
stories similar to Robinson Crusoe.
 Robinson Crusoe marked the beginning of realistic fiction as a
literary genre.
 Robinson Crusoe would crop up in Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s Émile (1762) and in Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (1867).
 Robinson Crusoe, as a young and impulsive wanderer, defied
his parents and went to sea. He was involved in a series of
violent storms at sea and was warned by the captain that he
should not be a seafaring man. Ashamed to go home, Crusoe
boarded another ship and returned from a successful trip to
Africa. Taking off again, Crusoe met with bad luck and was
taken prisoner in Sallee. His captors sent Crusoe out to fish, and
he used this to his advantage and escaped, along with a slave.

 He was rescued by a Portuguese ship and started a new

adventure. He landed in Brazil, and, after some time, he
became the owner of a sugar plantation. Hoping to increase his
wealth by buying slaves, he aligned himself with other planters
and undertook a trip to Africa in order to bring back a shipload
of slaves. After surviving a storm, Crusoe and the others were

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 shipwrecked. He was thrown upon shore only to discover that
he was the sole survivor of the wreck.
 Crusoe made immediate plans for food, and then shelter, to
protect himself from wild animals. He brought as many things
as possible from the wrecked ship, things that would be useful
later to him. In addition, he began to develop talents that he
had never used in order to provide himself with necessities. Cut
off from the company of men, he began to communicate with
God, thus beginning the first part of his religious conversion. To
keep his sanity and to entertain himself, he began a journal. In
the journal, he recorded every task that he performed each day
since he had been marooned.
 As time passed, Crusoe became a skilled craftsman, able to
construct many useful things, and thus furnished himself with
diverse comforts. He also learned about farming, as a result of
some seeds which he brought with him. An illness prompted
some prophetic dreams, and Crusoe began to reappraise his
duty to God. Crusoe explored his island and discovered another
part of the island much richer and more fertile, and he built a
summer home there.
 One of the first tasks he undertook was to build himself a canoe
in case an escape became possible, but the canoe was too
heavy to get to the water. He then constructed a small boat
and journeyed around the island. Crusoe reflected on his
earlier, wicked life, disobeying his parents, and wondered if it
might be related to his isolation on this island.
 After spending about fifteen years on the island, Crusoe found
a man's naked footprint, and he was sorely beset by
apprehensions, which kept him awake many nights. He
considered many possibilities to account for the footprint and
he began to take extra precautions against a possible intruder.
Sometime later, Crusoe was horrified to find human bones
scattered about the shore, evidently the remains of a savage
feast. He was plagued again with new fears. He explored the

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 nature of cannibalism and debated his right to interfere with
the customs of another race.
 Crusoe was cautious for several years, but encountered nothing
more to alarm him. He found a cave, which he used as a
storage room, and in December of the same year, he spied
cannibals sitting around a campfire. He did not see them again
for quite some time.
 Later, Crusoe saw a ship in distress, but everyone was already
drowned on the ship and Crusoe remained companionless.
However, he was able to take many provisions from this newly
wrecked ship. Sometime later, cannibals landed on the island
and a victim escaped. Crusoe saved his life, named him Friday,
and taught him English. Friday soon became Crusoe's humble
and devoted slave.
 Crusoe and Friday made plans to leave the island and,
accordingly, they built another boat. Crusoe also undertook
Friday's religious education, converting the savage into a
Protestant. Their voyage was postponed due to the return of
the savages. This time it was necessary to attack the cannibals
in order to save two prisoners since one was a white man. The
white man was a Spaniard and the other was Friday's father.
Later the four of them planned a voyage to the mainland to
rescue sixteen compatriots of the Spaniard. First, however,
they built up their food supply to assure enough food for the
extra people. Crusoe and Friday agreed to wait on the island
while the Spaniard and Friday's father brought back the other
men.
 A week later, they spied a ship but they quickly learned that
there had been a mutiny on board. By devious means, Crusoe
and Friday rescued the captain and two other men, and after
much scheming, regained control of the ship. The grateful
captain gave Crusoe many gifts and took him and Friday back to
England. Some of the rebel crewmen were left marooned on
the island.

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  Crusoe returned to England and found that in his absence he
had become a wealthy man. After going to Lisbon to handle
some of his affairs, Crusoe began an overland journey back to
England. Crusoe and his company encountered many hardships
in crossing the mountains, but they finally arrived safely in
England. Crusoe sold his plantation in Brazil for a good price,
married, and had three children. Finally, however, he was
persuaded to go on yet another voyage, and he visited his old
island, where there were promises of new adventures to be
found in a later account.


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 Romantic Age Novels

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet

 Born August 15, 1771, Edinburgh, Scotland—died September

21, 1832, Abbotsford, Roxburgh, Scotland.
 Scottish novelist, poet, historian, and biographer who is often
considered both the inventor and the greatest practitioner of
the historical novel.
 From his earliest years, Scott was fond of listening to his
elderly relatives’ accounts and stories of the Scottish Border,
and he soon became a voracious reader of poetry, history,
drama, and fairy tales and romances.
 He had a remarkably retentive memory and astonished visitors
by his eager reciting of poetry. His explorations of the
neighbouring countryside developed in him both a love of
natural beauty and a deep appreciation of the historic
struggles of his Scottish forebears.
 In the mid-1790s Scott became interested in
German Romanticism, Gothic novels, and Scottish border
ballads.
 His first published work, The Chase, and William and
Helen (1796), was a translation of two ballads by the
German Romantic balladeer G.A. Bürger. A poor translation of
Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen followed in 1799.
 Scott’s interest in border ballads finally bore fruit in his
collection of them entitled Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 3
vol. (1802–03). His attempts to “restore” the orally corrupted
versions back to their original compositions sometimes
resulted in powerful poems that show a sophisticated
Romantic flavour.
 The work made Scott’s name known to a wide public, and he
followed up his first success with a full-length narrative
 poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), which ran into many
editions.
 The poem’s clear and vigorous storytelling, Scottish regionalist
elements, honest pathos, and vivid evocations of landscape
were repeated in further poetic romances,
including Marmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), which
was the most successful of these pieces, Rokeby (1813),
and The Lord of the Isles (1815).
 In 1808 his 18-volume edition of the works of John
Dryden appeared, followed by his 19-volume edition
of Jonathan Swift (1814) and other works.
 By 1813 Scott had begun to tire of narrative poetry, and the
greater depth and verve of Lord Byron’s narrative poems
threatened to oust him from his position as supreme purveyor
of this kind of literary entertainment.
 In 1813 Scott rediscovered the unfinished manuscript of
a novel he had started in 1805, and in the early summer of
1814 he wrote with extraordinary speed almost the whole of
his novel, which he titled Waverley.
 A story of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, it reinterpreted and
presented with living force the manners and loyalties of a
vanished Scottish Highland society. The book was published
anonymously, as were all of the many novels he wrote down to
1827.
 Scott followed up Waverley with a whole series of historical
novels set in Scotland that are now known as the “Waverley”
novels.
 Guy Mannering (1815) and The Antiquary (1816) completed a
sort of trilogy covering the period from the 1740s to just after
1800.
 The first of four series of novels published under the title Tales
of My Landlord was composed of The Black Dwarf and the
masterpiece Old Mortality (1816).
  These were followed by the masterpieces Rob Roy (1817)
and The Heart of Midlothian (1818), and then by The Bride of
Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose (both 1819).
 It was only after writing these novels of Scottish history that
Scott, driven by the state of his finances and the need to
satisfy the public appetite for historical fiction that he himself
had created, turned to themes from English history and
elsewhere.
 He thus wrote Ivanhoe (1819), a novel set in 12th-century
England and one that remains his most popular book.
 The Monastery and The Abbot followed in 1820, and The
Pirate and The Fortunes of Nigel appeared in 1822. Two more
masterpieces were Kenilworth (1821), set in Elizabethan
England, and the highly successful Quentin Durward (1823), set
in 15th-century France. The best of his later novels
are Redgauntlet (1824) and The Talisman (1825), the latter
being set in Palestine during the Crusades.

Jane Austen
 Born December 16, 1775, Steventon, Hampshire, England—
died July 18, 1817, Winchester, Hampshire.
 She published four novels during her lifetime: Sense and
Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield
Park (1814), and Emma (1815).
 In these and in Persuasion and Northanger Abbey (published
together posthumously, 1817), she vividly depicted English
middle-class life during the early 19th century.
 Her novels defined the era’s novel of manners.
 Jane Austen’s lively and affectionate family circle provided a
stimulating context for her writing. It was this world—of the
minor landed gentry and the country clergy, in the village, the
neighbourhood, and the country town, with occasional visits
 to Bath and to London—that she was to use in the settings,
characters, and subject matter of her novels.
 Her earliest known writings date from about 1787, and
between then and 1793 she wrote a large body of material that
has survived in three manuscript notebooks: Volume the
First, Volume the Second, and Volume the Third.
 Her passage to a more serious view of life from the exuberant
high spirits and extravagances of her earliest writings is evident
in Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel written about 1793–94
(and not published until 1871).
 This portrait of a woman bent on the exercise of her own
powerful mind and personality to the point of social self-
destruction is, in effect, a study of frustration and of woman’s
fate in a society that has no use for her talents.
 The earliest of her novels published during her lifetime, Sense
and Sensibility, was begun about 1795 as a novel-in-letters
called “Elinor and Marianne,” after its heroines.
 Between October 1796 and August 1797 Austen completed the
first version of Pride and Prejudice, then called “First
Impressions.”
 In 1797 her father wrote to offer it to a London publisher for
publication, but the offer was declined.
 Northanger Abbey, the last of the early novels, was written
about 1798 or 1799, probably under the title “Susan.”
 In 1803 the manuscript of “Susan” was sold to the publisher
Richard Crosby for £10. He took it for immediate publication,
but, although it was advertised, unaccountably it never
appeared.
 In 1804 Jane began The Watsons but soon abandoned it.
 In 1809, she began to prepare Sense and Sensibility and Pride
and Prejudice for publication. She was encouraged by her
brother Henry, who acted as go-between with her publishers.
She was probably also prompted by her need for money.
 Two years later Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and
Sensibility, which came out, anonymously, in November 1811.
Both of the leading reviews, the Critical Review and
the Quarterly Review, welcomed its blend of instruction and
amusement.
 Meanwhile, in 1811 Austen had begun Mansfield Park, which
was finished in 1813 and published in 1814. By then she was an
established (though anonymous) author; Egerton had
published Pride and Prejudice in January 1813, and later that
year there were second editions of Pride and
Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.
 Pride and Prejudice seems to have been the fashionable
novel of its season.
 Between January 1814 and March 1815 she wrote Emma,
which appeared in December 1815.
 In 1816 there was a second edition of Mansfield Park,
published, like Emma, by Lord Byron’s publisher, John Murray.
 Persuasion (written August 1815–August 1816) was published
posthumously, with Northanger Abbey, in December 1817.
 For the last 18 months of her life, Austen was busy writing.
Early in 1816, at the onset of her fatal illness, she set down the
burlesque Plan of a Novel, According to Hints from Various
Quarters (first published in 1871).
 Until August 1816 she was occupied with Persuasion, and she
looked again at the manuscript of “Susan” (Northanger Abbey).
 In January 1817 she began Sanditon, a robust and self-mocking
satire on health resorts. This novel remained unfinished
because of Austen’s declining health. She died on July 18, and
six days later she was buried in Winchester Cathedral.
 Her authorship was announced to the world at large by her
brother Henry, who supervised the publication of Northanger
Abbey and Persuasion.
 After her death, there was for long only one significant essay,
the review of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in
 the Quarterly for January 1821 by the theologian Richard
Whately.

Mary Shelley

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)

 Walton's ship
Robert Walton writes a series of letters to his sister Margaret
Saville and tells the story of how his polar expedition becomes
trapped in ice and how one day he sees a 'gigantic figure' in the
distance. The next day he takes on board a mysterious stranger,
Victor Frankenstein. Victor takes over the narration and tells
Walton a complex tale about his life history and how he comes
to be alone so near to the North Pole.
 Young Victor
As a child, Victor Frankenstein's life in Switzerland is safe and
secure with loving parents (Alphonse and Caroline) and two
younger brothers (Ernest and William). Victor's charitable
mother also gives a home to a young orphan girl, Elizabeth
Lavenza, and Victor grows particularly fond of her. Victor shows
an inquisitive nature and is particularly fascinated by anything
scientific. Victor’s mother falls ill and passes away. It is her
dying wish that Victor and Elizabeth will one day marry.
 University
Victor attends the University of Ingolstadt in Germany where
he becomes fascinated by the creation of life. For two years he
pursues his ambition to create a man and bring him to life.
During this time he neglects his family and friends and makes
himself ill. Victor hopes to create a perfect being but in reality
the huge creature he produces is made up from pieces of
various corpses he has taken from graveyards and mortuaries.
Eventually Victor succeeds in bringing this creation to life but
when he realises how monstrous it actually is, he abandons it,
thinking it will die a natural death from neglect.
 Death strikes
 Victor is by now very unwell but is nursed back to health by his
closest friend, Henry Clerval. Together the two go travelling to
Italy. Just as they are about to return to Victor's home, they
receive the news that the youngest Frankenstein, Victor's
infant brother William, has been tragically killed. The blame has
fallen on Justine Moritz, a trusted servant of the Frankenstein
family, but Victor sees his creature near the scene of the crime
lit up by lightning flashes. He realises the truth about William's
death but also knows that nobody will believe his fantastic
story. The innocent Justine is tried and executed, so she and
William become the first to fall victim to Victor's ambition.
 The Monster's story
A guilty Victor goes alone into the Alps where, eventually, he
meets up with the Monster. He is surprised to find that not only
has the thing he made survived, but that it also has the power
of language. The Monster tells a long story about how he has
secretly lived in an outbuilding next to the De Lacey family
following their lessons as they teach a foreign visitor their
language and also learning about other subjects such as history,
geography, religion and culture. He repays the family by
secretly doing many of their household chores. Rashly, he
reveals himself to the family but they are so horrified by his
appearance that the Monster goes on the run again. He finds
similar treatment from everyone he meets and becomes lonely
and isolated. The Monster asks Victor to accept that he is
responsible for his loneliness and misery and to make him a
female companion to be his partner through life. Victor agrees
in a desperate attempt to save the rest of his family from the
Monster's revenge.
 The female Monster
Without telling him why, Victor journeys to Britain with Henry
as his companion. The two separate and Victor goes to the
remote Orkney Islands to carry out his promise of creating a
companion for the Monster. Although he begins the work, he
suddenly realises the consequences of his actions and destroys
 his creation. The Monster, who has been following Victor all
along, is furious. He promises that on the night Victor marries
he will return. Out of fury and revenge, the Monster murders
Henry.
 More death
A distraught Victor returns to Switzerland and Elizabeth. They
are married and set out for their honeymoon. Remembering
the Monster's threat, Victor assumes that this is the night that
the Monster will kill him but instead the Monster murders
Elizabeth. When Victor's father hears what has happened he
dies broken-hearted. Victor has a mental breakdown. When he
recovers he tells a magistrate what has happened but no action
is taken
 Walton's ship again
Victor accepts that he must deal with the problem himself and
sets out in pursuit of the Monster. He chases it right across
Europe and eventually finds himself in the Arctic, where Walton
discovered him on the ice. Walton once again continues the
narration in the letters to his sister. He tells her how Victor
eventually dies from a combination of exhaustion and exposure
to the cold and how he finds the Monster in Victor's cabin full
of sorrow for the death and destruction he has caused. Telling
Walton of the misery it has suffered, the Monster leaps back
onto the ice and disappears into the Arctic night, apparently
intent on killing itself.

Other Novelists and Their works:-

A] Maria Edgeworth[1767-1849] :
1. The Parent’s Assistant
2. Castle Rockrent
3. Ormond
B] John Galt[1779-1839] :
1. The Annals of the Parish
2. The Provost
3. The Entaili or, the Lairds of Grippy
C] William Harrison Ainsworth [1805-82] :
1. The Tower of London
2. The star Chamber
3. The Constable of the Tower
D] George P.R.James [1801-60] :
1. A Tale of France
2. De I’Orme
3. The Gipsey
E] Charles Lever[1806-72] :
1. The Knight of Gwynne
2. The O’Donoghue
3. The Dodd Family Abroad
F] Frederick Marryat[1792-1848] :
1. Jacob Faithful
2. Peter Simple
3. Search of a Father
G] Michael Scott[1789-1835] :
1. Tom Cringle’s Log
2. The Cruise of the Midge
3. Backsword’s Magazine
H] Thomas Love Peacock[1785-1866] :
1. The Genius of the Thames
2. Maid Marian
3. Nightmare Abbey
I] Washington Irving[1783-1859] :
1. History of the New York
2. Tales of a Traveler
3. The Conquest of Granda
J] James Fennimore Cooper[1789-1851] :
1. The Spy
2. The Pilot
3. The Red Rover
 Charles Dickens
Works Chronology

 The Pickwick Papers – 1836- March of 1836 until November

1837
 Oliver Twist – 1837- February 1837 and ended in April 1839.
 Nicholas Nickleby – 1838- The first installment of Nicholas
Nickleby was published on March 31, 1838 and the last
installment was published on October 1, 1839.
 The Old Curiosity Shop – 1840- published in installments in the
periodical, Master Humphrey’s Clock. The first installment was
printed in April of 1840 and the last was printed in February of
1841.
 Barnaby Rudge – 1841- published in installments from February
to November of 1841. It appeared in the magazine Master
Humphrey’s Clock.
 Martin Chuzzlewit – 1843- was first published by Chapman &
Hall in installments that began in January of 1843 and ran
through July of 1844.
 Dombey and Son – 1846- first published in installments that
began in 1846 and ran through 1848. Dickens gave a reading of
the first installment of Dombey to some of his friends. It went
very well and gave Dickens the idea of doing public readings.
 David Copperfield – 1849- was first published as a serial. The
first installment was published in May of 1849. The last
installment was issued in November of 1850.
 Bleak House – 1852- published in installments from March 1852
through September 1853.
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  Hard Times – 1854- first appeared in Dickens’s weekly
periodical, Household Words. Hard Times was published in
installments that began in April of 1854 and ran through August
of 1854.
 Little Dorrit – 1855- published in installments from December
of 1855 through June of 1857.
 A Tale of Two Cities – 1859- The first chapters of A Tale of Two
Cities appeared in print in April of 1859. The last chapter was
printed in November of that same year.
 Great Expectations – 1860- initially published in All the Year
Round, a weekly periodical founded and owned by Charles
Dickens. There were nine monthly installments, running from
December of 1860 until August 1861.
 Our Mutual Friend – 1864
 Our Mutual Friend is the last novel that Charles Dickens
completed before his death.

 The Mystery of Edwin Drood – 1870

 The Mystery of Edwin Drood was the fifteenth novel of Charles
Dickens. Dickens was only halfway finished with the book when
he died.

Other Works like Novella & Short Stories

 A Christmas Carol, because of its length, is classified as a

novella and not a novel. It was published in 1843.

 The Battle of Life – Published in 1852

 To Be Read at Dusk – Published in 1846, it’s the fourth of his

Christmas books.

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  A Child’s Dream of a Star – Published in 1850

 The Chimes: A Goblin Story

 A Christmas Carol – Published in 1843

 A Christmas Tree

 The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home – Published in

1845

 A Dinner at Poplar Walk – This was Dickens’s first published

work of fiction. It was later retitled as Mr. Minns and his Cousin

 Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions – Published in 1865 in All The

Year Round

 A Flight – Published in 1851 in Household Words

 Frozen Deep – Dickens and Wilkie Collins wrote this play. In

1857 they began benefit performances. Ellen Ternan was one
of the actresses hired to for the event. She later became
Dickens’s partner. This play also inspired A Tale of Two Cities.

 George Silverman’s Explanation – Published in 1868

 Going into Society – Published in 1858

 The Haunted Man – Published in 1848, it’s the fifth of Dickens’s

Christmas novellas.

 A Holiday Romance – Published in 1868

 The Holly-Tree – Published in 1855

 Hunted Down – Published in 1859

 The Lamplighter – Published in 1838

 The Long Voyage – Published in 1853 in the Household

Words magazine
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  Master Humphrey’s Clock

 A Message from the Sea – This short story appeared in the

1860 Christmas issue of All the Year Round. Charles Dickens and
Wilkie Collins wrote the first, second and fifth chapters of this
collaborative work.

 Mr. Minns and his Cousin – This was the second title for A
Dinner at Poplar Walk.

 Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy – Published in 1864

 Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings – Published in 1863

 No Thoroughfare – This was co-written with Wilkie Collins.

 Nobody’s Story

 Prince Bull – Published in 1855

 Public Life of Mr. Trumble, Once Mayor of Mudfog

 Sketches by Boz – Collection of essays originally published

between 1833 and 1836. They were gathered and issued in
book form, in February and August 1836. The two volumes
were consolidated into a one-volume edition that was
published in 1839.
 The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton – This stand-alone
story was published as the 29th chapter of The Pickwick Papers.
Its theme is similar to A Christmas Carol.
 Sunday under Three Heads

 The Thousand and One Humbugs – Published in 1855

 Tom Tiddler’s Ground

 Travelling Abroad – City of London Churches

 The Uncommercial Traveller

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  Wreck of the Golden Mary

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 Charles Dickens
Works 1

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

 The Pickwick Papers is a sequence of loosely related adventures
written for serialization in a periodical. The action is given as
occurring 1827–28.
 The novel's protagonist Samuel Pickwick, is a kind and wealthy
old gentleman, the founder and president of the Pickwick Club.
He suggests that he and three other "Pickwickians" should
make journeys to places remote from London and report on
their findings to the other members of the club. Their travels
throughout the English countryside by coach provide the chief
subject matter of the novel.
 A romantic misunderstanding with his landlady, the widow Mrs
Bardell, results in one of the most famous legal cases in English
literature, Bardell v. Pickwick, leading to them both being
imprisoned in the Fleet Prison for debt.
 Pickwick learns that the only way he can relieve the suffering of
Mrs Bardell is by paying her costs in the action against himself,
thus at the same time releasing himself from the prison
 The Atlantic writes, “'Literature' is not a big enough category
for Pickwick. It defined its own, a new one that we have learned
to call “entertainment.”
 A great hokey-cokey of eccentrics, conmen, phony politicians,
amorous widows and wily, witty servants, somehow catching
an essence of what it is to be English, celebrating
companionship, generosity, good nature, in the figure of

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 Samuel Pickwick, Esq, one of the great embodiments in
literature of benevolence. - Actor and director Simon Callow
 Popularised serialised fiction and cliffhanger endings.
 "Mr Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a
phrase, or a word, to be found in the book." (The illustrator’s
wife contended that the idea was her husband’s)
 Main characters
o Samuel Pickwick – the main protagonist and founder of
the Pickwick Club. Following his description in the text,
Pickwick is usually portrayed by illustrators as a round-
faced, clean-shaven, portly gentleman wearing spectacles.
o Nathaniel Winkle – a young friend of Pickwick's and his
travelling companion; he considers himself a sportsman,
though he turns out to be dangerously inept when
handling horses and guns.
o Augustus Snodgrass – another young friend and
companion; he considers himself a poet, though there is
no mention of any of his own poetry in the novel.
o Tracy Tupman – the third travelling companion, a fat and
middle-aged man who nevertheless considers himself a
romantic lover.
o Sam Weller – Mr Pickwick's valet, and a source of
idiosyncratic proverbs and advice.
o Tony Weller – Sam's father, a loquacious coachman.
o Alfred Jingle – a strolling actor and charlatan, noted for
telling bizarre anecdotes in a distinctively extravagant,
disjointed style
 Pickwick, Sam Weller, and his father Tony briefly reappeared in
1840 in the magazine Master Humphrey's Clock.

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Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy's Progress
 Oliver Twist portrays the sordid lives of criminals, and exposes
the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-
19th century.
 Dickens satirises child labour, domestic violence, the
recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street
children.
 Born in a workhouse, the orphan Oliver Twist is sold into
apprenticeship with an undertaker. After escaping, Oliver
travels to London, where he meets the "Artful Dodger", a
member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly
criminal Fagin.
 The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's
Progress, as well as the 18th-century caricature series by
painter William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's
Progress.
 Setting- fictional town of Mudfog.
 Important characters-
o Oliver Twist – an orphan child whose mother died at his
birth; father is dead when Oliver's paternity is revealed.
o Mr Bumble – a beadle in the parish workhouse where
Oliver was born
o Mrs Mann – superintendent where the infant Oliver is
placed until age 9 who is not capable of caring for the
"culprits" as she is self-centered and greedy.
o Mr Sowerberry – an undertaker who took Oliver as
apprentice
o Mr Gamfield – a chimney sweep in the town where Oliver
was born
o Mr Brownlow – a kindly gentleman who takes Oliver in,
his first benefactor

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 o Rose Maylie – Oliver's second benefactor, later found to
be his aunt
o Fagin – fence and boss of a criminal gang of young boys
and girls (named after a fellow employee, Bob Fagin, that
Charles met at the blacking factory as a child)
o Bill Sikes – a professional burglar
o Bull's Eye – Bill Sikes's vicious dog
o The Artful Dodger – Fagin's most adept pickpocket

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Containing a Faithful

Account of the Fortunes, Misfortunes, Uprisings, Downfallings, and
Complete Career of the Nickleby Family

 The story centres on the life and adventures of Nicholas

Nickleby, a young man who must support his mother and sister
after his father dies.
 Dickens’s mother, Elizabeth Dickens, was the model for the
always-confused Mrs. Nickleby.
 The story was a response to the uprising of cheap British
boarding schools that advertised "no vacation." It was
Dickens's intention to reveal to the public the horrors of
Yorkshire's boarding schools, where parents would dump
their unwanted children for indefinite periods.
 Dickens and the eventual illustrator of the later editions of the
novel visited a boarding school in Yorkshire undercover. The
headmaster, William Shaw, was notorious for having children
die in his care. Dickens based the headmaster in Nicholas
Nickleby on this man. Dickens was also inspired by a horrific
visit to a local cemetery in which multiple children from the
boarding school were buried.
 Hoping to provide support for his mother and sister after the
death of his father, Nicholas Nickleby turns to his uncle, Ralph
Nickleby, for assistance.

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  Ralph wants nothing to do with his late brother's family and
feigns to help Nicholas by securing a position as assistant
master at the Dotheboys Hall school in Yorkshire run by
unscrupulous Wackford Squeers. Nicholas soon becomes
disgusted with Squeers' treatment of his pupils and leaves,
giving Squeers a sound thrashing, and liberating Smike whom
Squeers has mistreated for years.
 Nicholas and Smike move in with Ralph Nickleby's
clerk, Newman Noggs, in London and then travel to Portsmouth
where they take up acting in Vincent Crummles' touring stage
company.
 On hearing of the mistreatment of his sister, Kate, at the hands
of his uncle, Nicholas and Smike return to London. Nicholas
secures employment with the philanthropic Cheeryble
brothers and helps rescue Madeline Bray from the evil designs
of his uncle and Arthur Gride.
 Smike dies from the years of abuse suffered at Squeers' school
and is found to be Ralph Nickleby's son. Meanwhile, Ralph is
ruined financially and hangs himself. Squeers is sentenced to
transportation, his school is disbanded, and Nicholas marries
Madeline Bray.
 Important characters-
o Nicholas Nickleby
o Ralph Nickleby: The book's principal antagonist,
Nicholas's uncle.
o Catherine "Kate" Nickleby: Nicholas's younger sister.
o Mrs. Catherine Nickleby: Nicholas and Kate's mother,
who provides much of the novel's comic relief.
o Newman Noggs: Ralph's clerk, who becomes Nicholas's
devoted friend.
o Sir Mulberry Hawk: A lecherous nobleman who has taken
Lord Verisopht under his wing. One of the most truly evil
characters in the novel, he forces himself upon Kate and
pursues her solely to humiliate her after she rejects him.

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 o Lord Frederick Verisopht: Hawk's friend and dupe, a rich
young nobleman.
o Mr Pluck and Mr Pyke
o Arthur Gride: An elderly associate of Ralph.
o Peg Sliderskew: Gride's elderly housekeeper.
o Brooker: An old beggar.
o Smike: A poor drudge living in Squeers's "care".
o Wackford Squeers: A cruel, one-eyed, Yorkshire
"schoolmaster". He runs Dotheboys Hall school.
o Mr Vincent Crummles: Head of the Crummles
theatre troupe, a larger-than-life actor-manager
o Charles and Edwin (Ned) Cheeryble – Charles and Net are
twin brothers. They are the kind-hearted employers of
Nicholas Nickleby.

The Old Curiosity Shop

 The plot follows the life of Nell Trent and her grandfather, both
residents of The Old Curiosity Shop in London. The events of
the book seem to take place around 1825.
 The Old Curiosity Shop is the story of Little Nell Trent and the
evil dwarf Quilp. When Little Nell’s grandfather gambles away
his curiosity shop to his creditor Quilp, the girl and the old man
flee London. Nell’s friend Kit Nubbles and a mysterious Single
Gentleman (who turns out to be the wealthy brother of Nell’s
grandfather) attempt to find them but are thwarted by Quilp,
who drowns while fleeing the law. Little Nell dies before Kit and
the Single Gentleman arrive, and her brokenhearted
grandfather dies days later.
 The novel is concerned with greed as one of the central themes
as well. Daniel Quilp is at the center of this theme as the novel's
main antagonist. Despite his grotesque appearance, he is
charming and manipulative and enjoys seeing others suffer.

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  It is one of two novels (the other being Barnaby Rudge)
which Charles Dickens published along with short stories in his
weekly serial Master Humphrey's Clock
 Queen Victoria read the novel in 1841 and found it "very
interesting and cleverly written"
 Important characters-
o Nell Trent, the novel's main character. Portrayed as
infallibly good and angelic
o Christopher "Kit" Nubbles, Nell's friend and servant. He
watches out for Nell when she is left in the shop alone at
night
o Daniel Quilp, the novel's primary villain. He mistreats his
wife, Betsy, and manipulates others to his own ends
through a false charm he has developed over the years.
o Richard "Dick" Swiveller, in turn, Frederick Trent's
manipulated friend, Sampson Brass's clerk, and the
Marchioness' guardian and eventual husband. He delights
in quoting and adapting literature to describe his
experiences.
o Mrs. Betsy Quilp, Quilp's mistreated wife.
o Mr. Sampson Brass, an attorney of the Court of the King's
Bench.
o Miss Sarah "Sally" Brass, Mr. Brass' obnoxious sister and
clerk.
o Mrs. Jarley, proprietor of a travelling waxworks show,
who takes in Nell and her grandfather out of kindness.
However, she only appears briefly.
o Frederick Trent, Nell's worthless older brother, who is
convinced that his grandfather is secretly wealthy.
o Mr. Garland, a kind-hearted man, father of Abel Garland
and employer of Kit.
o Isaac List and Joe Jowl, professional gamblers.
o Mr. Chuckster

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 o Mr. Marton, a poor schoolmaster. Thomas Codlin,
proprietor of a travelling Punch and Judy show.
o Mr. Harris, called 'Short Trotters', the puppeteer of the
Punch and Judy show.
o Mrs. Jiniwin, Mrs. Quilp's mother and Quilp's mother-in-
law.

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 Charles Dickens
Works 2

Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty

 First historical novel by Dickens
 Set during the Gordon Riots of 1780
 In a case of mistaken identity, Barnaby Rudge, the intellectually
disabled son of a murderer, is arrested as a leader of a mob of
anti-Catholic rioters. Although he is subsequently jailed and
sentenced to death, he is pardoned at the scaffold.
 The novel begins with an unsolved double murder and goes on
to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution.
Through the course of the novel fathers and sons become
opposed, apprentices plot against their masters and anti-
Catholic mobs rampage through the streets.
 Peter Ackroyd has called it "one of Dickens's most neglected,
but most rewarding, novels".
 Major characters-
o The Rudges – Barnaby, a simple man, his loving
mother Mary, and his companion Grip, the loquacious
raven
o The Willets – Old John, the keeper of the Maypole Inn,
and his kindly son Joe
o The Vardens – Gabriel, the locksmith, his manipulative
wife Martha, and his beautiful daughter Dolly Varden
o The Chesters – the villainous Sir John, Esquire,
M.P. (Member of Parliament) and his innocent
son Edward

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 o The Haredales – Mr Geoffrey Haredale (younger brother
of the murdered Reuben), and his niece (Reuben's
daughter) Emma
o Hugh – the sinister hostler of the Maypole Inn
o Lord George Gordon (a fictionalisation of the historical
personality), his loyal servant John Grueby, and his
obsequious and duplicitous secretary Mr Gashford
o Simon Tappertit – Gabriel Varden's apprentice
o Ned Dennis – the hangman of Tyburn
o Stagg – the crafty blind man
o Solomon Daisy, 'Long' Phil Parkes, and Tom Cobb, Old
John's three cronies
o Mr Langdale

The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit

 Dickens’s last attempt at picaresque novels.
 Dickens declared it “immeasurably the best of my stories”.
 The story’s protagonist, Martin Chuzzlewit, is an apprentice
architect who is fired by Seth Pecksniff and is also disinherited
by his own wealthy grandfather.
 Martin and a servant, Mark Tapley, travel to the United States,
where they are cheated by land speculators and have other
unpleasant but sometimes comic experiences.
 Thoroughly disillusioned with the New World, the pair return
to England, where a humbled Martin is reconciled with his
grandfather, who gives his approval for Martin’s forthcoming
marriage to his true love, Mary Graham.
 This powerful black comedy involves hypocrisy, greed and
blackmail, as well as the most famous of Dickens's grotesques,
Mrs Gamp (the quarrelsome lady).

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  Seth Pecksniff is the sycophantic English architect whose
insincere behaviour made the name Pecksniff synonymous
with hypocrisy.
 Inspired by his visit to America in 1842 and his failed attempt
to get the US publishers to acknowledge the international
copyright laws. Jilted by it, he satirized the whole country as a
place filled with selfish arrogants who work as per their
benefits.
 In his preface to the novel, Dickens identified the theme-
Selfishness.
 The first private detective character in English fiction- Mr
Nadgett
 The novel is dedicated to Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts, a
friend of Dickens)
 Main characters-
o Seth Pecksniff.- A widower with two daughters, who is a
self-styled teacher of architecture. He believes that he is
a highly moral individual who loves his fellow-man, but
mistreats his students and passes off their designs as his
own for profit.
o Charity and Mercy Pecksniff- Seth’s two daughters,
affectionately known as Cherry and Merry, or as the two
Miss Pecksniffs.
o Old Martin Chuzzlewit- The wealthy patriarch of the
Chuzzlewit family, lives in constant suspicion of the
financial designs of his extended family.
o Young Martin Chuzzlewit- The grandson of Old Martin
Chuzzlewit. He is the closest relative of Old Martin and
has inherited much of the stubbornness and selfishness
of the old man.
o Anthony Chuzzlewit- Brother of Old Martin. He and his
son, Jonas, run a business together called Chuzzlewit and
Son. They are both self-serving, hardened individuals who

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 view the accumulation of money as the most important
thing in life.
o Jonas Chuzzlewit- Mean-spirited, sinisterly jovial son of
Anthony Chuzzlewit. He views his father with contempt
and wishes for his death so that he can have the business
and the money for himself.
o Mr and Mrs Spottletoe- Nephew-in-law and niece of Old
Martin Chuzzlewit,
o George Chuzzlewit- Bachelor cousin of Old Martin
o Thomas (Tom) Pinch- Former student of Pecksniff’s who
has become his personal assistant. He is kind, simple, and
honest in everything he does, serving as a foil to
Pecksniff.
o Ruth Pinch- Tom Pinch’s sister.
o Mark Tapley- Good-humoured employee of the Blue
Dragon Inn and suitor of Mrs Lupin
o Montague Tigg / Tigg Montague- A down-on-his-luck
rogue at the beginning of the story, and a hanger-on to
distant Chuzzlewit kin Chevy Slyme.
o John Westlock- Begins as a disgruntled student falling out
with Pecksniff. After Tom Pinch’s flight to London, John
serves as a mentor and companion to both Tom and his
sister; he falls in love with and eventually marries Ruth
Pinch.
o Mr Nadgett- Soft-spoken, mysterious individual who is
Tom Pinch’s landlord and serves as Montague’s private
investigator.
o Sarah Gamp (also known as Sairey or Mrs Gamp)- Sarah
Gamp is an alcoholic who works as a midwife, monthly
nurse, and layer-out of the dead.
o Mary Graham- Caretaker of old Martin Chuzzlewit
o Mr Chuffey.
o Jefferson Brick- War correspondent in The New York
Rowdy Journal.

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Dombey and Son (Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son:
Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation)

 The book deals with the then-prevalent common practice

of arranged marriages for financial gain.
 Other themes include child cruelty, particularly in Dombey's
treatment of Florence, familial relationships, and betrayal and
deceit and the consequences thereof.
 Another strong central theme, which the critic George Gissing
elaborates on in detail in his 1925 work The Immortal Dickens,
is that of pride and arrogance, of which Paul Dombey senior is
the extreme exemplification in Dickens's work.
 The title character, Mr. Dombey, is a wealthy shipping
merchant whose wife dies giving birth to their second child, a
long-hoped-for son and heir, Paul. The elder child, Florence,
being female, is neglected by her father.
 When Paul’s health is broken by the rigours of boarding school
and he dies, Dombey’s hopes are dashed. In her grief, Florence
draws emotional support from her father’s employee Walter
Gay.
 Resentful of their relationship, Dombey sends Gay to the West
Indies, where he is shipwrecked and presumed lost. Dombey
then takes a new wife—the poor but proud widow Edith
Granger—who eventually runs off with Dombey’s trusted
assistant.
 After his ultimately empty pursuit of the pair, Dombey
returns bereft and bankrupt. Walter Gay, meanwhile, has
returned with the story of his rescue by a China clipper and
asked Florence to marry him. They set sail for the East,
returning a few years later with a baby son—named Paul—to
find Mr. Dombey on the brink of suicide. The family’s
reconciliation concludes the book
 Important characters-
o The Dombeys

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 o Mrs. Blockitt is a nurse to took care of Mrs. Dombey after
she gave birth to Paul.
o Harriet Carker is the sister of James and John Carker.
o James Carker works for Mr. Dombey as a manager.
o John Carker is the brother of James Carker. John works as
a junior clerk for Dombey.
o Louisa Chick – The sister of Mr. Paul Dombey.
o Captain Edward (Ned) Cuttle –He is a retired sea captain
and a friend of Solomon Gills.
o Walter Gay – He is the nephew of Solomon Gills. He
works for Mr. Dombey.
o Solomon Gills – He is also known as Uncle Sol.
o Edith Granger – She becomes the second Mrs. Dombey.
o Mrs. Pipchin runs a boarding house for children in
Brighton.
o Mrs. Skewton She likes to be called Cleopatra.
o Miss Lucretia Tox is an admirer of Mr. Dombey

The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of

David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He
Never Meant to Publish on Any Account)

 Bildungsroman & Autobiographical

 Use of Ist Person Narrator

 Considered to be "the triumph of the art of Dickens Of the

books he wrote, it was his favourite. Called "the triumph of the

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 art of Dickens" and also his personal favourite. This novel marks
a turning point in his writing, separating his novels of youth
with his novels of maturity.

 In the preface to the 1867 edition, he wrote, “like many fond

parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child, and his
name is David Copperfield”.

 Modelled on 18th-century genre of "personal histories" with

the obvious theme of growth and change of an individual.

 At the same time, Dickens satirises Victorian society and life

overall. E.g. the criminal justice system, the employment of
children in factories, class structure, the status of women in
marriage and in the society overall, etc.

 Some other themes are the plight of so-called "fallen women",

and prostitutes, the prison system, emigration to the colonies,
etc.

 The most important autobiographical material concerns the

months that Dickens, still a child, spent at the Warren factory,
his diligence with his first love, Maria Beadnell, and finally his
career as a journalist and writer. These episodes are essentially
factual:
o The description of forced labor to which David is
subjected at Murdstone and Grinby
o David's fascination with Dora Spenlow is similar to that
inspired by the capricious Maria
o The major stages of his career, from his apprenticeship
at Doctors' Commons to writing his first novel, via
the shorthand reporting of parliamentary procedures.

 Important characters-
o David Copperfield
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 o Agnes Wickfield- David’s true love and second wife, the
daughter of Mr. Wickfield.
o James Steerforth- A condescending, self-centered
villain. He abuses David, although David is too
enraptured with him and too grateful for his patronage
to notice.
o Clara Peggotty- David’s nanny and caretaker. Peggotty
is gentle and selfless.
o Little Em’ly- Peggotty’s unfaithful niece, who is sweet
but also coy and vain.
o Uriah Heep- A two-faced, conniving villain who puts on
a false show of humility and meekness to disguise his
evil intentions.
o Miss Betsey Trotwood- David’s eccentric, kind-hearted
aunt.
o Dora Spenlow- David’s first wife and first real love.
Dora is foolish and giddy, more interested in playing
with her dog, Jip, than in keeping house with David.
o Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins Micawber- An unlucky couple
crippled by constantly precarious finances. Mr.
Micawber is based on Dickens's father, John Dickens.
o Tommy Traddles- Young David’s simple, goodhearted
schoolmate.
o Clara Copperfield- David’s mother. The kind, generous,
and goodhearted Clara embodies maternal caring until
her death, which occurs early in the novel.
o Mr. Edward Murdstone and Miss Jane Murdstone- The
cruel second husband of David’s mother, and

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 Murdstone’s sister. The Murdstones are strict and
brutal not only toward David, but to his mother as well.
o Mrs. Steerforth and Rosa Dartle- Steerforth’s mother
and her ward, the orphan child of her husband’s
cousin.
o Mr. Peggotty, Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge- The simple
relatives of David’s nurse, Clara Peggotty.
o Doctor Strong and Annie Strong- A man and woman
who exemplify the best of married life. Doctor Strong
and Annie are faithful and selfless, each concerned
more about the other than about himself or herself.

 Important keywords- Salem House, a boarding school; King's

Bench Prison.

Bleak House

 At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in

the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce (inspired from
the Thellusson v Woodford case). Chancery or equity courts
were one half of the English civil justice system, existing side-
by-side with law courts. Chancery courts heard actions having
to do with wills and estates, or with the uses of private
property.

 The central concern of Bleak House is its satire of the English

Chancery court system. This novel helped support a judicial
reform movement which culminated in the enactment of legal
reform in the 1870s.

 Bleak House is the story of the Jarndyce family, who wait in vain
to inherit money from a disputed fortune in the settlement of
the extremely long-running lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

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  It is told both by a third-person omniscient narrator and a first-
person narrator (Esther Summerson).

 Interesting fact: One character, Krook, smells of brimstone and

eventually dies of spontaneous human combustion.

 Important characters-
o Esther Summerson- An orphan of uncertain parentage.
Esther is the legal ward of John Jarndyce, a mysterious
benefactor whom she has never met. She is assigned by
the Court of Chancery (which is roughly equivalent to
family and probate court) to be a companion to a relative
of John Jarndyce.
o Mr. Nemo- Captain Hawdon's pseudonym, now employed
as a law writer. He has fallen upon very hard times, and
he is a shadow of the man he was. His fateful romance
with Lady Dedlock, which produced their illegitimate
daughter Esther, ruined his life.
o Ada Clare- The young woman that Esther Summerson has
been assigned to be companion for. She is in love almost
at once with her distant cousin, another ward of
Chancery.
o John Jarndyce- Esther, Ada's, and Richard's benefactor, as
well as many other people's. He is kind-hearted and
unfailingly generous.
o Miss Flite- A slightly crazy elderly woman who frequents
the law courts. She is apparently waiting the settlement
of her own case, which is never explained.
o Mademoiselle Hortense- Lady Dedlock's French maid
o Mr. Vholes- An unscrupulous lawyer employed fruitlessly
by Richard Carstone on the Jarndyce & Jarndyce suit.
o Mr. Skimpole- An amusing but amoral sponger.
o Lady Dedlock- The fashionable and stoic wife of Sir
Leicester Dedlock. She is the mother of Esther, but did not

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 raise her because she was told that Esther died soon after
birth.
o Sir Leicester Dedlock- A baronet of a family 700 years old.
o Richard Carstone- A ward in Chancery, and under the legal
guardianship of John Jarndyce.
o Charley Neckett
o George Rouncewell (Mr. George)
Dr. Allan Woodcourt
o Tom Jarndyce
o Mr. Snagsby
o Mrs. Snagsby
o Mr. Rouncewell
o The Smallweeds

Hard Times: For These Times

 The shortest of Dickens's novels
 Based on the theme of pessimism regarding the divide between
capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers during the
Victorian era. It exposes the socio-industrial conditions of the
Victorian age. "Critique of industrial society"- Walter Allen
 George Bernard Shaw argued Hard Times to be a novel of
"passionate revolt against the whole industrial order of the
modern world".[51] But he criticised the novel for failing to
provide an accurate account of trade unionism of the time.
 Additionally, the Utilitarians were one of the targets of
Dickens's satire. The novel also explores the effects of social
class on the morality of individuals.
 It is his only novel not to have scenes set in London; setting is of
the fictitious industrial Coketown.
 Louisa and Tom Gradgrind have been harshly raised by their
father, an educator, to know nothing but the most
factual, pragmatic information. Their lives are devoid of

11 | P a g e
 beauty, culture, or imagination, and the two have little or
no empathy for others.
 Louisa marries Josiah Bounderby, a vulgar banker and mill
owner. She eventually leaves her husband and returns to her
father’s house.
 Tom, unscrupulous and vacuous, robs his brother-in-law’s bank.
Only after these and other crises does their father realize that
the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their
lives.
 Hard Times has neither a preface nor illustrations.
 Published to boost up the sales of the Household Words
 The Book is divided into 3 parts- Sowing, Reaping, Garnering.
 F. R. Leavis, in The Great Tradition, described the book as
essentially a moral fable, and that 'of all Dickens's works (it is)
the one that has all the strengths of his genius – that of a
completely serious work of art'.
 Important characters-
o Thomas Gradgrind is the notorious school board
Superintendent, who is dedicated to the pursuit of
profitable enterprise.
o Josiah Bounderby is a business associate of Mr.
Gradgrind.
o Louisa (Loo) Gradgrind, (later Louisa Bounderby), is the
eldest child of the Gradgrind family. She has been taught
to suppress her feelings and finds it hard to express
herself clearly.
o Cecilia (Sissy) Jupe is a circus girl of Sleary's circus, as well
as a student of Thomas Gradgrind's very strict classroom.
Sissy has her own set of values and beliefs which make
her seem unintelligent in the Gradgrind household.
o Thomas (Tom) Gradgrind, Junior is the oldest son and
second child of the Gradgrinds. Initially sullen and

12 | P a g e
 resentful of his father's Utilitarian education, Tom has a
strong relationship with his sister Louisa.
o Stephen Blackpool is a worker at one of Bounderby's
mills.
o Jane Gradgrind - a younger sister of Tom and Louisa
Gradgrind who spends a lot of time with Sissy Jupe. She is
cheerful, affectionate and despite looking similar to
Louisa, in personality she is opposite.
o James Harthouse – is an indolent, languid, upper-class
gentleman, who attempts to woo Louisa.
o Mr. Sleary - the owner of the circus which employs Sissy's
father. He speaks with a lisp. A kind man, he helps both
Sissy and young Tom when they are in trouble.
o Mrs. Pegler - an old woman who sometimes visits
Coketown to observe the Bounderby estate. She is later
revealed to be Bounderby's mother, proving his "rags-to-
riches" story to be fraudulent

Little Dorrit
 Marshalsea prison for debtors in London- autobiographical
element
 The novel satirises the institution of debtors' prisons, where
debtors were imprisoned, unable to work and yet confined
until they had repaid their debts.
 Dickens also satirises the British class system.
 The novel also addresses the loss of life of 360 British soldiers
at the Battle of Balaclava.
 The character of Little Dorrit (Amy) was inspired by Mary Ann
Cooper.
 The plot is divided into 3 parts- Poverty, Riches and The
Financial Collapse.

13 | P a g e
  Amy Dorrit, referred to as Little Dorrit, is born in and lives much
of her life at the Marshalsea prison, where her father is
imprisoned for debt. She and her siblings earn meagre wages at
jobs outside the prison walls, returning nightly to Marshalsea.
 Little Dorrit works as a seamstress for Mrs. Clennam, whose
son Arthur takes an interest in the Dorrit family and eventually
helps free Mr. Dorrit from prison.
 Arthur becomes a debtor himself and falls in love with Little
Dorrit, but because their financial circumstances are now
reversed, he does not ask her to marry him.
 In the end Arthur’s mother, a miserly, mean-spirited woman, is
forced to reveal that Arthur is not really her son and that she
had been keeping money from him and the Dorrits for many
years. This circumstance leaves Little Dorrit and Arthur free to
marry.
 “It's probably not a good read in its entirety with the children,
but parts of it will certainly give you and them great pleasure."-
Franz Kafka
 Important characters-
o Amy "Little" Dorrit
o Mr. William Dorrit
o Arthur Clennam- Arthur is a 40-year-old man at the start
of the novel, freshly returned to England after spending
20 years living in China.
o Fanny Dorrit- William Dorrit’s daughter and Amy’s older
sister.
o Daniel Doyce- Daniel Doyce is an inventor and business
man who becomes business associates with Arthur. At the
end of the novel, he repays Arthur's debts in order to free
him from prison.

14 | P a g e
 o Mr. Merdle- Mr. Merdle is a wealthy businessman in
London. Mr. Merdle tricks and deceives many people, and
commits suicide before being exposed as a fraud.
o Mr. Nandy (Old Nandy)
o Edmund Sparkler
o Mr. Chivery
o Flora Casby Finching-. In her youth, she was Arthur’s
fiancée, but because Arthur’s parents disapproved of the
relationship, the engagement ended.
o Flintwinch- Monsieur Rigaud/Blandois/Lagnier- Rigaud is a
sinister, criminal figure who murders his wife before the
start of the novel and then goes on to blackmail Mrs.
Clennam with the secret he knows about her family.
o Pet Meagles
o Jean-Baptiste Cavalletto/Mr. Baptist
o Tattycoram
o The Gowans
o Mr. Casby
o Pancks- Pancks leads the effort to restore Mr. Dorrit to his
lost fortune.
o Mr. and Mrs. Plornish
o John Chivery
o Tite Barnacle- Tite is a government official who works at
the Circumlocution Office, and a member of the wealthy
and socially elite Barnacle family.
o Maggy
o Mr. Rugg
o Clarence Barnacle

A Tale of Two Cities

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  Second and last historical novel by Charles Dickens; set
in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution
and the Reign of Terror.
 The Telegraph and The Guardian claim that it is one of the best-
selling novels of all time
 Famous opening lines- “It was the best of times, it was the
worst of times,”.
 “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is
a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”
 Plot is divided into 3 parts- Recalled to Life, The Golden Thread
and The Track of a Storm.
 Timeline- November 1775/ 1780/ Autumn 1792 (corresponding
each part).
 Sources-
o The Dead Heart by Watts Phillips
o The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle
o Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
o The Castle Spector by Matthew Lewis
o Travels in France by Arthur Young
o Tableau de Paris by Louis-Sébastien Mercier
 Important characters-
o Jerry Cruncher
o Jarvis Lorry
o Lucie Manette
o Monsieur Defarge
o Madame Defarge
o Jacques One, Two, and Three
o Charles Darnay
o Mr Stryver
o Miss Pross
o Marquis St. Evrémonde
o The Vengeance

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17 | P a g e
 Charles Dickens
Works 3

Great Expectations
 Bildungsroman genre
 It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully
narrated in the first person
 It chronicles the coming of age of the orphan Pip while also
addressing such issues as social class and human worth. During
the course of the novel, Pip comes to realize that his “great
expectations”—social standing and wealth—are less important
than loyalty and compassion.
 Other themes- moral redemption from sin; wealth and its equal
power to help or corrupt; ambition; obsession/emotional
manipulation versus real love; class structure and social rules.
 Plot is divided into 3 parts- First Stage, Second Stage, Third
Stage
 Revised Ending: In the original ending of the work, Pip and
Estella were not reunited, but Dickens was persuaded to write
a happier conclusion.
 "all of one piece and consistently truthful"- George Bernard
Shaw
 Shaw also called it as Dickens’s “most compactly perfect book.”
 “Dickens's humour, not less than his creative power, was at its
best in this book."
 Important characters-
o Pip (Philip Pirrip, Handel)

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 o Joe Gargery The kind blacksmith married to Pip's sister
who is the moral reference point for most characters in
the story.
o Mrs. Joe Gargery (Georgiana M'Ria) Pip's abusive older
sister who constantly reminds Pip of all she has done for
him, especially "raising him up by hand."
o Biddy
o Uncle Pumblechook Joe's pompous, self-important uncle
who arranges for Pip to visit Miss Havisham's house
o Dolge Orlick
o Miss Havisham The strange, reclusive woman who was
abandoned and swindled by her fiancé on her wedding
day. She has raised Estella to exact revenge on all men.
Pip assumes that Miss Havisham is his benefactress.
o Estella The beautiful and haughty adopted daughter of
Miss Havisham who taunts and attracts Pip. She does not
know she is the daughter of criminals — Molly and
Magwitch. She is trained to mistreat all men but after an
abusive marriage grows to be a kinder person.
o Mr. Jaggers An immensely successful London trial lawyer;
feared by all but loved by none. He first tells Pip of his
expectations and serves as his guardian.
o John Wemmick The chief clerk for Jaggers.
o Molly - She is Estella's mother and only Jaggers and
Wemmick know this until Pip figures it out.
o Mr. Skiffins Miss Skiffins brother, who helps Pip set
Herbert up in business.
o Bill Barley (Gruffandgrim) Clara's alcoholic, abusive,
bedridden father who was a former ship's purser.
o Mrs. Whimple The elderly and kind landlady of the home
where the Barleys live. Magwitch hides there under an
assumed name.
o Bentley Drummle A belligerent gentleman at Mr. Pocket's
who later marries Estella, beats her, and dies when
thrown from a horse.

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 o Matthew Pocket Herbert's father and Pip's tutor.
o Magwitch (Abel Magwitch, Provis, First Convict, Mr.
Campbell) The convict on the marshes who later becomes
wealthy in Australia and is the source of Pip's
expectations. He is caught trying to escape England and
dies in prison with Pip by his side. He is the father of
Estella and a former partner in crime with Compeyson,
who betrayed him.
o Compeyson (Second Convict)

Our Mutual Friend

 The last novel completed by Charles Dickens
 Inspiration for Our Mutual Friend came from Richard Henry
Horne's essay "Dust; or Ugliness Redeemed", published
in Household Words in 1850.
 Having ended his long association with Hablot Browne, Our
Mutual Friend was illustrated by Marcus Stone and was the first
monthly serialized Dickens novel to use woodcuts instead of
steel plates for the illustrations
 Our Mutual Friend is essentially a critique of
Victorian monetary and class values. London is portrayed as
grimmer than ever before, and the corruption, complacency,
and superficiality of “respectable” society are fiercely attacked.
 The novel is also notable because of Dickens’s sympathetic
portrayal of a Jewish character named Riah- a supposed
atonement for Fagin in Oliver Twist.
 Dust Business- Garbage Business
 John Harmon, son of a wealthy dust contractor and heir to his
father's fortune if he agrees to marry Bella Wilfer, is away from
England when his father dies.

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  On the way home he is supposed drowned in a case of
mistaken identity. With his supposed death the dust fortune
goes to Boffin, his father's former servant.
 John maneuvers himself into the Boffin home as secretary John
Rokesmith. Here he meets Bella and, with the help of the kindly
Boffins, wins her love as Rokesmith and marries her. He later
reveals his true identity and regains his fortune.
 A major symbol is the River Thames, which is linked to the
major theme of rebirth and renewal.
 Important characters-
o John Harmon – is heir to the Harmon estate, under the
condition that he marry Bella Wilfer.
o Nicodemus (Noddy) Boffin, the Golden Dustman –
becomes a member of the nouveaux riches when Old Mr
Harmon's heir is considered dead.
o Lizzie Hexam
o Charley Hexam
o Mortimer Lightwood – is a lawyer
o Eugene Wrayburn – who is seen as the novel's second
hero, is a barrister, and a gentleman by birth, though he is
roguish and insolent.
o Jenny Wren – whose real name is Fanny Cleaver, is "the
dolls' dressmaker"
o Mr Riah – is a Jew who manages Mr Fledgeby's money-
lending business.
o Bradley Headstone – began life as a pauper[10] but rose to
become Charley Hexam's schoolmaster and the love
interest of Miss Peecher
o Silas Wegg – is ballad-seller with a wooden leg. He is a
"social parasite".
o Mr Venus – a taxidermist and articulator of bones,
o Mr Alfred Lammle
o Mr Fledgeby
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 o Roger "Rogue" Riderhood
o Reginald "Rumty" Wilfer

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

 Last and incomplete- only six of a planned twelve instalments
having been written.
 Published posthumously in 1870.
 Edwin Drood was his only true mystery story. He left few clues
as to how he intended to end the work, and the solution itself
remains a mystery.
 Edwin Drood is the ward of Jack Jasper, the choirmaster of
Cloisterham and an outwardly respectable opium addict. Jasper
secretly loves Drood’s fiancée, Rosa Bud.
 Drood and Rosa no longer love each other and break their
engagement. Drood disappears soon thereafter. Neville
Landless, also in love with Rosa, is arrested for Drood’s murder
but is released when no body is found.
 Jasper confesses his love to Rosa and threatens to impeach
Neville unless she returns his love. Datchery, a stranger, arrives,
shadowing and worrying Jasper—and there the manuscript
ends.
 Important characters-
o Edwin Drood: an orphan. When he comes of age, he plans
to marry Rosa Bud and go to Egypt, working as an
engineer with the firm in which his father had been a
partner.
o Rosa Bud: an orphan and Edwin Drood's fiancée. Their
betrothal was arranged by their fathers.
o John Jasper: the choirmaster of Cloisterham Cathedral,
Edwin Drood's uncle and guardian

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 o Neville Landless: one of a set of orphaned twins; his sister
is Helena.
o Rev. Septimus Crisparkle
o Mr. (Hiram) Grewgious: a London lawyer and Rosa Bud's
guardian.
o Mr. Bazzard: Mr. Grewgious's clerk.
o (Stony) Durdles: a stonemason
o Dick Datchery
o Princess Puffer: a haggard woman who runs a London
opium den frequented by Jasper.
o Miss Twinkleton: the mistress of the Nuns' House, the
boarding school where Rosa lives.
o Mr. (Luke) Honeythunder: a bullying London
philanthropist. He is Neville and Helena Landless's
guardian.
o Mr. Tartar: a retired naval officer.
o Mrs. Billickin: a widowed distant cousin of Mr. Bazzard.

A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas

 A novella on the treatment of the poor and the ability of a

selfish man to redeem himself by transforming into a more
sympathetic character are the key themes of the story-
Christian theme
 The book is divided into five chapters, which Dickens titled
"staves"- found in Western Music notes
 "a national benefit and to every man or woman who reads it, a
personal kindness” - William Makepeace Thackeray in Fraser's
Magazine.
 A Christmas Carol is a play about a mean-spirited and selfish
old man, Ebenezer Scrooge, who hates Christmas.
 One cold Christmas Eve, Scrooge is unkind to the people who
work for him, then refuses to give to charity, and then is rude

6|Page
 to his nephew when he invites him to spend Christmas with
him.
 When Scrooge gets home, he is visited by the ghost of his old
business partner Jacob Marley – and then by three ghosts! They
are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and
Christmas Future.
 The Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge on a journey
through Christmases from his past, taking Scrooge to see
himself as an unhappy child and a young man more in love with
money than his fiancée.
 The Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge his clerk, Bob
Cratchit’s family. At Bob Cratchit’s house Scrooge sees Tiny Tim,
who is very ill, but full of spirit. The ghost then takes him to see
his nephew Fred’s Christmas celebrations - which he had been
invited to, but rebuffed.
 Finally, The Ghost of Christmas Future terrifies Scrooge by
showing him visions of his own death…
 The ghosts’ journey through time teaches Scrooge the error of
his ways. When he wakes up on Christmas Day he is full of
excitement, and buys the biggest turkey in the shop for the
Cratchit family before spending the day with his nephew, full of
the joys of Christmas.
 “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as
merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry
Christmas to everybody. A happy New Year to all the world.”

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 Thomas Hardy
Works 1

Hardy’ s categorization of his own works: (He wrote 15 novels out of

which he published only 14 during his career)

Romances and fantasies

 A Pair of Blue Eyes: A Novel (1873)

 The Trumpet-Major (1880)
 Two on a Tower: A Romance (1882)
 A Group of Noble Dames (1891, a collection of short stories)
 The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament (1897) (first
published as a serial from 1892)

Novels of character and environment

 The Poor Man and the Lady (1867, unpublished and lost)
 Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch
School (1872)
 Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
 The Return of the Native (1878)
 The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of
Character (1886)
 The Woodlanders (1887)
 Wessex Tales (1888, a collection of short stories)
 Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully
Presented (1891)
 Life's Little Ironies (1894, a collection of short stories)

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 Jude the Obscure (1895)

Novels of ingenuity

 Desperate Remedies: A Novel (1871)

 The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters (1876)
 A Laodicean: A Story of To-day (1881)

Arthur Compton-Rickett gave the following classification to Hardy’s

novels-

Pastoral Tragedies

 The Return of the Native

 The Mayor of Casterbridge
 Tess of D’Urbervilles
 Jude, the Obscure

Pastoral Comedies

 The Hand of Ethelberta

 A Laodicean
 Two on a Tower

Pastoral Romances

 Under the Greenwood Tree

 Far from the Madding Crowd
 A Pair of Blue Eyes
 The Trumpet Major
 The Woodlanders

Pastoral Extravaganza

 The Well Beloved

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Note: Hardy’s views on life have been described using various
terms: “pessimism”, “twilight view of life”, “determinism”,
“fatalism”, “atheism”, “evolutionary meliorism”.

Hardy himself denied that he was a pessimist, calling himself a

"meliorist," i.e., one who believes that the world may be made
better by human effort.

Most of his works deal with social tragedy, human suffering,

disappointment in love and life, all-powering fate, etc. Many novels
in fact have a fatalistic end.

A more appropriate term for his novels would be- Realist Novels and
Regional Novels (Wessex- Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon,
Hampshire and much of Berkshire)

Desperate Remedies
 Second novel to be written but first to be published
(anonymously).
 Written with the intention- "attempt a novel with a purely
artistic purpose” because his first written novel, The Poor Man
and the Lady, couldn’t get published because it was believed to
be politically controversial in its time.
 It was influenced by the contemporary “sensation” fiction
of Wilkie Collins.
 The Spectator called the book "a desperate remedy for an
emaciated purse" .
 Cytherea Graye, is forced by poverty to accept a post as lady's
maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe, the woman whom her
father had loved but couldn’t marry.

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  Cytherea loves Edward Springrove, an architect, but with a lot
of complications: Miss Adclyffe's invokes troubles; Edward is
already in a love-less engagement and the urgent need to
support her sick brother.
 As a result, she unwillingly accepts the hand of Aeneas
Manston, Miss Aldclyffe’s illegitimate son. His first wife was
believed to have died in a fire, but later it is revealed that she
was in fact alive.
 Manston's wife, apparently, returns to live with him, but
Cytherea, her brother and Edward come to suspect that the
woman claiming to be Mrs. Manston is actually an
impersonator.
 It is soon found out that Manston had actually killed his wife in
an argument after she left the inn, and had brought in the
impostor to prevent being caught (a poacher had heard their
argument at the inn).
 In the novel's final chapters, Manston attempts to kidnap
Cytherea and escape, but is stopped by Edward. Manston later
commits suicide in his cell, and Cytherea and Edward marry,
leading to a happy ending.

Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch

School
 In this book he evoked, within the simplest of marriage plots,
an episode of social change (the displacement of a group of
church musicians) that was a direct reflection of events
involving his own father shortly before Hardy’s own birth.
 It was Hardy's second published novel (anonymously), and the
first of what was to become his series of Wessex novels.
 The book was originally to be called The Mellstock Quire.
 Saturday Review: "prose idyll"

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  The novel follows the activities of a group of west gallery
musicians, the Mellstock parish choir, one of whom, Dick Dewy,
becomes romantically entangled with a comely new village
schoolmistress, Fancy Day.
 The novel opens with the violinists and singers of the choir —
including Dick, his father Reuben Dewy, and grandfather
William Dewy — making the rounds in Mellstock village on
Christmas Eve.
 Dick falls for Fancy at first sight, who already has other suitors-
Shiner, a rich farmer, and Mr Maybold, the new vicar at
the parish church.
 Maybold informs the choir that he has decided to replace the
traditional choir with Fancy, an accomplished organist.
 Dick & Fancy become secretly engaged. Fancy's father is initially
opposed, but changes his mind when as a consequence Fancy
stops eating and her health deteriorates.
 Some months later, after Fancy's first Sunday service as
organist, Maybold proposes to Fancy and she accepts in
temptation. He later finds out through Dick that she is already
engaged.
 Following an admonishing letter by Maybold, Fancy withdraws
her consent and requests him to keep her initial acceptance a
secret.
 The final chapter is a joyful as Reuben, William, and the rest of
the Mellstock rustics celebrate Dick and Fancy's wedding day.
 The novel concludes after the ceremony with Dick telling Fancy
that their happiness must be due to there being such full
confidence between them. He says that they will have no
secrets from each other to which Fancy replies “None from to-
day”.
 Other characters-
o Robert Penny: one of the choir, a boot and shoe-maker by
profession

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 o Reuben Dewy: Dick's father, a tranter (carrier), the de
facto leader of, and spokesman for, the Mellstock Choir
o William Dewy: Dick's grandfather
o Geoffrey Day: Fancy's father, gamekeeper and steward at
one of the Earl of Wessex's outlying estates
o Frederic Shiner: a rich farmer in Mellstock, and Dick's rival
in the courtship of Fancy.

A Pair of Blue Eyes

 The first not published anonymously
 In March 1870 Hardy had been sent to make an
architectural assessment of the lonely and dilapidated Church
of St. Juliot in Cornwall. There—in romantic circumstances he
first met the principal’s sister-in-law, Emma Lavinia Gifford,
who became his wife four years later.
 She actively encouraged and assisted him in his literary
endeavours, and this novel drew heavily upon the
circumstances of their courtship for its wild Cornish setting and
its melodramatic story of a young woman (somewhat
resembling Emma) and the two men who pursue her- friends
become rivals.
The novel explores the love triangle among Elfride Swancourt,
Stephen Smith and Henry Knight. Elfride finds herself caught in
a battle between her heart and her mind mixed with social and
parental expectations.
 Stephen Smith is a socially inferior but ambitious young man
who loves her and with whom she shares a country
background.
 Henry Knight is the respectable, established, older man.
Although the two are friends, Knight is not aware of Smith's
previous liaison with Elfride. Knight, who is a relative of Elfride's
stepmother, is later on the point of seeking to marry Elfride,
but ultimately rejects her when he learns she had been
previously courted.
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  Elfride, out of desperation, marries a third man, Lord Luxellian,
although she dies at childbirth.
 The two early rivals for the hand of Elfride later meet by chance
in Hyde Park and travel by train to Endelstow unaware of
Elfride's death. They notice “a dark and richly-finished van”
attached to the train, which carries the coffin containing her
dead body.
 The Examiner - "it was study of a more tragic kind, with more
complex characters and a more stirring plot” (as compared to
Under the Greenwood Tree).
 The Spectator wrote that the story “is powerful, well-
proportioned in its parts, and of varied and deep interest, yet
not too harrowing for pleasure.”
 The novel was admired by the American realist author and
critic, William Dean Howells, who wrote: “Thomas Hardy I first
knew in A Pair of Blue Eyes. As usual after I had read this book
and felt the new charm in it, I wished to read the books of no
other author, and to read his books over and over”
 Alfred Tennyson liked A Pair of Blue Eyes best of all the Wessex
novels.

Far from the Madding Crowd

 His first major literary success
 The first novel which introduced the setting of Wessex- rural
southwest England
 Published anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine
 The title has been taken from the poem “An Elegy written in
a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray. Lucasta Miller
points out that the title is an ironic literary joke
 It deals in themes of love, honour and betrayal, against a
backdrop of the seemingly idyllic, but often harsh, realities
of a farming community in Victorian England. It made Hardy
famous by its agricultural settings and its distinctive blend of
humorous, melodramatic, pastoral, and tragic elements.
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  The book is a vigorous portrayal of the beautiful and
impulsive Bathsheba Everdene and her marital choices
among Sergeant Troy, the dashing but irresponsible
soldier; William Boldwood, the deeply obsessive farmer;
and Gabriel Oak, her loyal and resourceful shepherd.
 Gabriel Oak who falls in love with a headstrong, independent
Bathsheba Everdene. Bathsheba also has other suitors but
refuses to marry because she wishes to remain
independent. Eventually, however, she meets a soldier
named Troy whom she falls in love with. Bathsheba and Troy
marry in secret but their marriage is not a happy one.
 Eventually, she discovers that he impregnated another
woman who died in childbirth. Troy leaves town in shame
and is thought to be dead. In his absence, Bathsheba is
courted by another man and reluctantly agrees to marry
him. Troy returns dramatically and is shot dead by
Bathsheba's other suitor, Mr. Boldwood. In the end,
Boldwood is sent to prison and Bathsheba and Gabriel
marry.
 The Spectator's reviewer wrote that ‘the details of the
farming and the sheep-keeping, of the labouring, the
feasting, and the mourning, are painted with all the
vividness of a powerful imagination’.
 Henry James, who vehemently disliked Hardy’s work,
remarked vitriolically that in Far from the Madding
Crowd ‘everything human in the book strikes us as factitious
and insubstantial; the only things we believe in are the
sheep and the dogs’.
 Some critics even believed that the novel could have been
written by George Eliot herself, or it was a good imitation of
her novels.
 In her biography of Hardy, Claire Tomalin asserts that Far
from the Madding Crowd ‘is the warmest and sunniest of his
novels’.

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  By alluding to Gray’s poem, Hardy evoked the decline of
English rural culture that was being rapidly transformed into
an urban and industrial civilisation. To be ‘far from the
madding crowd’ meant for Hardy to be far from the bustle of
modern, urbane civilisation, of which he disapproved.
 Hardy classified his novel as belonging to the ‘novels of
character and environment’. Its title illustrates the central
idea of the author’s wish to portray the interaction between
people and the environment, which profoundly determines
their lives. Hardy presented Wessex as a mystical ‘dream-
country’ hardly touched by industrialisation and modern life.
 Although the novel has a form of pastoral romance, it tells
the story of the ill-fated passions and illustrates Hardy’s
belief in the randomness and fragility of human existence.
Hence, it has been called a subversive-pastoral or even “anti-
pastoral” by Norman Page.
 Far from the Madding Crowd makes use of Biblical and
mythical allusions in plot and characters. The names
Bathsheba alludes to the Biblical beauty, also spelled
Bethsabea, whom King David saw bathing and fell in love
with her. Gabriel Oak similarly refers to the archangel
Gabriel, who appears four times in the Bible. Shepherd
Gabriel is like a Biblical guardian figure, a messenger of God.
His surname also symbolises the strength and endurance of
the oak tree. He is always ready to protect Bathsheba
despite his misfortunes.
 The novel also reflects Hardy’s belief that people should
adapt to changing circumstances if they want to survive- a
direct influence of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
(evolutionary meliorism).

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 Thomas Hardy
Works 2

The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters

 Published in The Cornhill Magazine and edited by Leslie
Stephen
 The Hand of Ethelberta is a social comedy turning on versions
and inversions of the British class system, was poorly received
and has never been widely popular.
 George Gissing considered it "surely old Hardy's poorest book".
 Ethelberta, a governess, is raised in humble conditions. She is
married at the age of 18 but her husband dies only two weeks
after the wedding.
 Ethelberta is now 21 and lives with her mother-in-law, Lady
Petherwin. Ethelberta has been treated to foreign travels and
luxuries by her benefactress, but restricted from seeing her
family.
 It is later revealed that her father is a butler, a secret she tries
to conceal. To continue her existence, she will struggle as a
poet and storyteller.
 In the journey, she attracts various suitors- Mr. Christopher
Julian (a struggling musician), Mr. Neigh and Mr. Ladywell, both
gentlemen and friends, and Lord Mountclere, a 65-year old
aristocrat with a dubious past- The central situation provides
occasion for a good deal of subversive social comment.
 She finally chooses Lord Mountclere, after he discovers the
secret of her low birth and family, and she comes to dominate
him, running his estate and saving him from bankruptcy.

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  Christopher Julian realises he would never have been happy
with her had she married him, and settles for her younger sister
Picotee who had been in love with him for years.
 Ethelberta Petherwin, the heroine, is the dominant figure in the
narrative: beautiful, enterprising and outspoken, she becomes
a social celebrity through her poetry and her performances as
an oral story-teller.
 Hardy himself later acknowledged in a Preface: “A high degree
of probability was not attempted in the arrangement of the
incidents, and there was expected of the reader a certain
lightness of mood.”
 The narrative mode recurrently harks back to the comedies of
Congreve or Sheridan.
 Some of the characters have names derived from the theatre of
manners Menlove, Ladywell, Tipman, Neigh.

The Return of the Native

 It first appeared in the magazine Belgravia (was turned down
by both the Cornhill Magazine (which had published his two
previous novels) and by Blackwoods).
 Themes—sexual politics, thwarted desire, and the conflicting
demands of nature and society
 The novel examines the diabolical role of chance and fate in
determining the course of action.
 The Return of the Native raised some eyebrows when it first
appeared as a serial in Victorian Britain with its deeply flawed
heroine and its open acknowledgement of illicit sexual
relationships.
 He intended to structure the novel into five books, mirroring
the classical tragic format. ( Chorus consisting of Grandfer
Cantle, Timothy Fairway, and the rest of the heathfolk.)

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  The novel is set in Egdon Heath, a fictional barren grassland in
Wessex in southwestern England.
 The native of the title is Clym Yeobright, who has returned to
the area to become a schoolmaster after a successful career as
a jeweller in Paris. He and his cousin Thomasin exemplify the
traditional way of life, while Thomasin’s husband, Damon
Wildeve, and Clym’s wife, Eustacia Vye, long for the excitement
of city life.
 Disappointed that Clym is content to remain on the heath,
Eustacia, willful and passionate, rekindles her affair with the
reckless Damon.
 After a series of coincidences, Eustacia comes to believe that
she is responsible for the death of Clym’s mother. Convinced
that fate has doomed her to cause others pain,
 Eustacia flees and is drowned drowns trying to save her.
 In a later edition Hardy made additions to the novel- Thomasin
marries Diggory Venn, a humble longtime suitor, and Clym
becomes an travelling preacher.

The Trumpet-Major
 His only historical novel
 The novel originally appeared in 1880 in Good Words .
 Set in and around the seaside resort of Budmouth (Weymouth)
 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.
 The novel is set in Weymouth during the Napoleonic wars. John
fights with Wellington in the Peninsular War, and Bob serves
with Nelson at Trafalgar.

3|Page
  The fictional plot of the novel focuses on Anne Garland, a lovely
country girl, who lives quietly with her impoverished widowed
mother in a part of Overcombe Millhouse, which belongs to the
miller Loveday, until a regiment of Royal dragoons sets up
camp near the village and prepares to defend the coast from
the expected invasion of Napoleon’s fleet.
 She becomes attracted by one of the dragoons, John Loveday,
one of the miller's sons and a gallant trumpet-major. John falls
in love with Anne but soon finds out that she has two more
suitors: his jolly and fickle brother Bob, who was Anne’s
childhood sweetheart, now a merchant navy captain and a two-
timing womaniser, and Festus Derriman, the selfish and
cowardly nephew of a local squire.
 Eventually, Bob Loveday, who persuades Captain Hardy to take
him on board the Victory, returns safely from the Battle of
Trafalgar, captivates Anne's heart and they are married. His
brother John, the trumpet major, will die in one of the bloody
battlefields of Spain in the service of the king and country.
 The book is unusual for being the only one of novels for which
he wrote preliminary notes, in a pocket book traditionally
labelled as 'The Trumpet-Major Notebook'.
 Both the Spectator and the Athenaeum praised the author's
imaginative power and his ability to portray rural life.
The Athenaeum even compared him to Dickens: “Mr. Hardy
seems to be in the way to do for rural life what Dickens did for
that of the town”.
 Shortly after the publication of The Trumpet Major the Critic, a
New York periodical, accused Hardy of plagiarising the amusing
militia drill scene in Chapter 23 entitled “Military Preparations
on an Extended Scale,” from Augustus Baldwin Longstreet's
book, Georgia Scenes, published in America in 1840. In the
preface to the 1895 edition of The Trumpet Major, he stated
that the accusations were groundless.

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 A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of To-Day
 First published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine.
 Laodicean- a rich city in antiquity of Asia minor; modern day
Turkey.
 The title of the novel derives from Revelation 3 in The Bible,
where the Laodiceans are denounced as being lukewarm,
and neither cold nor hot- someone who is half-hearted.
 Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist
father who had purchased it from the aristocratic De Stancy
family (an amateur photographer, William Dare, is
the illegitimate son of Captain De Stancy).
 She employs two architects, one local and one, George
Somerset from London (represents modernity). She is
attracted to each man for his respectively different virtues.
 William Dare decides to intervene to promote his father in
her affections (solely so that he, Wade, can continue to
gamble and live off Paula's income). He fakes a telegram and
a photograph to make it appear that Somerset is leading a
debauched lifestyle as a drunken gambler.
 His maneuver is discovered by Captain De Stancy's sister
Charlotte who has befriended Paula. She decides to tell
Paula the truth and Paula pursues Somerset to the continent
where he has gone mistakenly believing Paula and the
Captain to have been married.
 She finds him and they are reunited and marry. In revenge,
Wade burns down the castle using his family's portraits and
furniture as kindling; Somerset proposes to build a modern
house in its place.
 It has been called ‘a fairly disastrous failure’ and a ‘potboiler
of the worst sort’.

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  In 1889 J. M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan) dismissed A
Laodicean as one of Hardy’s ‘dull books’ which are ‘here and
there, nasty as well, and the besom of oblivion will soon pass
over them’.

Two on a Tower: A Romance

 Published in the magazine Atlantic Monthly.
 Epigraph, from Richard Crashaw poem, Love's Horoscope:
"Ah, my heart her eyes and she
Have taught thee new astrology.
Howe'er Love's native hours were set,
Whatever starry synod met,
'Tis in the mercy of her eye,
If poor Love shall live or die."

 The purpose behind Two on a Tower is set out unambiguously

in his 1895 Preface to the work:

“This slightly-built romance was the outcome of a wish to set

the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the
stupendous background of the stellar universe, and to impart
to readers the sentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes
the smaller might be the greater to them as men.”

 Two On A Tower is a tale of star-crossed love in which Hardy

sets the emotional lives of his two lovers against the
background of the stellar universe.
 Considered to be his most complete treatment of the theme of
love across the class and age divide, and also the fullest
expression of his fascination with astronomy and science.
 The romance involves Lady Viviette Constantine, wife of a
wealthy land-owner, and the young astronomer, Swithin St.

6|Page
 Cleeve, some ten years her junior, who has been using a tower
on her land as an observatory.
 Viviette, enduring a secluded life while her husband is away in
Africa, feels drawn to Swithin and helps him financially with his
research.
 When eventually the two fall in love their relationship is to be
alternately constrained, encouraged and re-defined by shifting
circumstances.
 Her husband's death leaves the lovers free to marry, but the
discovery of a legacy forces them apart.

The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of

Character

 It was first serially published in the periodical The Graphic

 It is set in a fictional rural England with Casterbridge
standing in for Dorchester in Dorset.
 Hardy remarks in his 1895 Preface: “The story is more
particularly a study of one mans deeds and character than,
perhaps, any other of those included in my Exhibition of
Wessex Life.”
 The novel tells of the rise and fall of Michael Henchard, who,
starting from nothing after abandoning his wife and
daughter, gains prosperity and respect and is reunited with
his family only to lose everything through his own wrong-
headedness, his vengeful nature, and a spate of bad luck.
 Theme- the arbitrary and almost always malign workings
of the universe and blind chance upon the destinies of
men.

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  Michael Henchard, the novel's protagonist, is a young, hot-
tempered hay-trusser/ While intoxicated at a village fair, he
impulsively sells his wife and infant child at auction for the
sum of five guineas. Waking up the next day, he experiences
extreme remorse and makes a solemn vow not to touch
alcohol for the next 21 years.
 After a gap of 18 years, Henchard's wife, Susan, and her
daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, track Henchard down. Through
hard work and iron self-discipline, he has become wealthy
and socially influential as the mayor of Casterbridge, the
principal town in the region of Wessex. Susan agrees to
remarry him. Henchard also befriends Donald Farfrae, a
young newcomer from Scotland, who helps Henchard to
prosper in business.
 Soon, however, Henchard and Farfrae part ways, becoming
bitter rivals. Susan becomes ill, and shortly before her death
she writes a letter to Henchard, telling him Elizabeth-Jane is
not really his daughter. Her father is the sea captain Richard
Newson, the man who bought Susan at auction. Henchard is
powerfully disillusioned and comes to treat Elizabeth-Jane
with cold indifference.

 A new character now enters the picture: Lucetta

Templeman. Lucetta and Henchard were romantically linked
in the past. Henchard presses this claim, but Lucetta is
captivated instead by young Donald Farfrae. Her shift of
affections enrages Henchard, and he becomes obsessed
with ruining Farfrae to get his revenge.

 Henchard miscalculates, however, and suffers huge losses in

the grain business, while Farfrae prospers. Henchard is
finally forced to declare bankruptcy. He also becomes a
social outcast when everyone learns he sold Susan at
auction. Lucetta is so unnerved she becomes fatally ill.

8|Page
  After Lucetta's death, Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane are
married. This is the last straw for Henchard, now an
impoverished, embittered wanderer. He dies a lonely death
in a poor cottage.

The Woodlanders
 It was serialised in Macmillan's Magazine.
 The work is a pessimistic attack on a society that values high
status and socially sanctioned behaviour over good character
and honest emotions.
 Hardy's portrayal of sexual morality led to him being identified
with the 'Anti-marriage league'. This novel is certainly a step in
this direction.
 The story begins as Grace Melbury, daughter of a timber
merchant in a Dorset village, Little Hintock, returns from
finishing school and rejects her simple but understanding
fiancé, the apple grower Giles Winterbourne.
 Grace consents to the urgings of her father and marries Edred
Fitzpiers, a young doctor of great charm but
questionable moral character.
 Grace soon turns to Giles for comfort after Edred goes off with
Mrs. Felice Charmond, a local upper-class woman.
 Giles, who is seriously ill, relinquishes his cottage to Grace and
moves into a rude hut, where he soon dies of exposure.
Although Grace mourns his loss, she eventually reconciles with
Edred.
 It was declared by the Saturday Review in April 1887 to be, "the
best [novel] that Hardy has written"
 Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch- "his loveliest if not his finest book"
 William Lyon Phelps- "the most beautiful and most noble of
Hardy's novels"

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  A. Edward Newton- "one of the best novels of the last half
century".[5]
 George Gissing read the novel in March 1888 "with much
delight" but felt that the "human part is...painfully
unsatisfactory".
 Other important characters-
o Mrs Dollery o a horse drawn van driver

o Mr Percomb o a master barber

o Marty South o a young woman who is in love with Giles

o John South o her father (55)

o Mrs Felice Charmond o a rich landowner, mistress of Hintock House, a

former actress

o Giles Winterborne o a dealer in apple trees and cider pressing

o George Melbury o a timber merchant

o Grace Melbury o his young and educated daughter (20)

o Mrs Lucy Melbury o his second wife, Grace’s ex-nurse

o Grammer Oliver o old servant of the Melburys

o Edred Fitzpiers o a country doctor and would-be scientist

10 | P a g e
 o Robert Creedle o assistant worker to Giles

o Suke Damson o a hoyden

o Tim Tangs o her fiancé, a wood turner

o Fred o an ex lawyer’s clerk

Beaucock

11 | P a g e
 Thomas Hardy
Works 3

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented

 It challenged the sexual and religious morals of late Victorian
England- it was published in a censored version, in The
Graphic in 1891.
 Based in Wessex
 The plot has following headings-
o The Maiden
o Maiden No More
o The Rally
o The Consequence
o The Woman Pays
o The Convert
o Fulfilment
 After her impoverished family, Durbeyfields. learns of its noble
lineage, naive Tess Durbeyfield is sent by her sluggish father
and ignorant mother to make an appeal to a nearby wealthy
family who bear the ancestral name d’Urberville.
 Tess, attractive and innocent, is seduced by dissolute Alec
d’Urberville and secretly bears a child, Sorrow, who dies in
infancy.
 Later working as a dairymaid, she meets and marries Angel
Clare, an idealistic gentleman who rejects Tess after learning of
her past on their wedding night.
 Forced back into the arms of Alec, Tess must sacrifice her
personal happiness for economic survival, but when her
feelings of injustice overwhelm her in a moment of passion, the
consequences are tragic- she will murder Alec.
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  In the end, Tess is also executed.
 Important characters-

o Tess Durbeyfield, the novel's protagonist, a country girl

o John and Joan Durbeyfield, Tess's parents
o Eliza Louisa ('Liza-Lu) Durbeyfield, the eldest of Tess's
younger siblings
o Angel Clare, intending farmer who becomes Tess's
husband
o Alec d’Urberville, Tess's seducer/rapist and father of her
child
o Mrs d’Urberville (or Stoke-d’Urberville), Alec's mother
o Marian, Izz Huett and Retty Priddle, milkmaids, friends of
Tess
o Reverend and Mrs Clare, Angel's parents
o Reverends Felix and Cuthbert Clare, Angel's brothers
o Mercy Chant, schoolteacher whom Angel's family initially
hopes he will marry
o Sorrow- the dead infant of Tess

The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament

 The main setting of the novel, the Isle of Slingers, is based on
the Isle of Portland in Dorset.
 The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a
Temperament appeared in the Illustrated London
News between October and December 1892, but was only
reprinted when Penguin Classics reissued both the original
serial version and the later 1897 rewrite, The Well-Beloved.
 Theme: man's eternal quest for perfection in both love and art,
and the suffering that ensues.
 The novel’s protagonist, a sculptor named Jocelyn Pierston, has
returned to the Isle of Slingers, having spent a number of years
in London.

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  Throughout the course of the novel – which charts his
development at intervals of twenty years – he falls in love with
three generations of the same family: a young woman named
Avice Caro, her daughter, Ann Avice, and then her daughter,
Avice.
 Each of these women is viewed by Pierston as the embodiment
of an ethereal, timeless quality he calls ‘the well-beloved’.
 Pierston is twenty when he falls for the first Avice, forty when
he loves the second, and sixty when he meets the third. He
nearly marries the third, but on the night before their wedding,
Avice elopes with a younger man whom she loves.
 There are also a few marginal characters: Somers, Pierston’s
male friend and confidant; and Marcia Bencomb, with whom
Jocelyn has a brief affair, and with whom he ends up at the end
of the novel, marrying out of companionship as much as love.
 Hardy was later to note that Marcel Proust seemed to have
endorsed and developed the theory exhibited inThe Well-
Beloved. He quotes Prousts claim that when we fall in love it is
essentially with a figment of our own invention.

Jude the Obscure

 It is Hardy's last completed novel.
 The novel explores several social problems in Victorian England,
especially those relating to the institutions of marriage, the
Church, and education.
 Inspired in part by the scholastic failure and suicide of his
friend Horace Moule. Certain details were also inspired by the
death of his cousin, Tryphena Sparks in 1890.
 Serialized in 1894 in Harper's New Monthly Magazine as The
Simpletons, then Hearts Insurgent. In 1895, the book was
published in London under its present title, Jude the Obscure.
 The novel depicts the lives of individuals who are trapped by
forces beyond their control.
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  Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school
at Christminster (the University of Oxford). Sidetracked by
Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be
pregnant by him, Jude marries her but is later deserted.
 He earns a living as a stonemason at Christminster; there he
falls in love with his independent-minded cousin, Sue
Bridehead- freethinking 'New Woman'. Out of a sense of
obligation, Sue marries the schoolmaster Phillotson, who has
helped her.
 Unable to bear living with Phillotson, she returns to live with
Jude and eventually bears his children out of wedlock.
 Their poverty and the weight of society’s disapproval begin to
take a toll on Sue and Jude; the climax occurs when Jude’s son
by Arabella hangs Sue and Jude’s children and himself.
 In penance, Sue returns to Phillotson and the church. Jude
returns to Arabella and eventually dies miserably.
 Hardy was so distressed by its reception that he wrote no more
fiction, concentrating solely on his poetry.
 Other important characters-
o Little Father Time (Jude The son of Jude and Arabella.
o Drusilla Fawley Jude's great-aunt, who raises Jude.
o Physician Vilbert A quack doctor of local reputation.
o Mrs. Edlin A widow who looks after Drusilla Fawley
before she dies and who is a friend to Jude and Sue.
o Mr. Donn Arabella's father, a pig farmer and later owner
of a pork shop.
o Anny A girl friend of Arabella's.
o Cartlett Arabella's "Australian husband."
o George Gillingham A teacher friend of Phillotson's.
o Tinker Taylor A "decayed church-ironmonger" and
drinking companion of Jude's.

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The Dynasts
 Closet drama in verse and prose
 Hardy himself described this work as "an epic-drama of the war
with Napoleon, in three parts, nineteen acts and one hundred
and thirty scenes".
 The verse is primarily iambic pentameter, occasionally
tetrameter, and often with rhymes. The three parts were
published in 1904, 1906 and 1908.
 Hardy called it "the longest English drama in existence"
 George Orwell wrote that Hardy had "set free his genius"
 The play contains an extensive tragic chorus of metaphysical
figures ("Spirits" and "Ancient Spirits") who observe and discuss
the events. It Is called "Phantom Intelligences".
 Epigraph: “And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and wrong,
And trumpets blown for wars.”

 The work illustrates Hardy’s stoical pessimism and is a clear

statement of his belief in “Immanent Will,” a blind and
indifferent force that determines the fates (and
generally blights the lives) of the privileged and the common
people alike.
 Part I begins with Napoleon as newly proclaimed emperor
locked in battle with Pitt. Part II starts Napoleon at the height
of power but gradually the star of Wellington rises in the
peninsular campaigns. Part III shows Napoleon's catastrophe:
Moscow, Spain, Leipzig, Waterloo.
 The historical passages are faithful to fact, though scenes range
from rustics to Wessex through all the swirling courts and
battlefields of Europe.
 Important characters-
 PHANTOM INTELLIGENCE
 THE ANCIENT SPIRIT OF THE YEARS/CHORUS OF
THE YEARS.

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  THE SPIRIT OF THE PITIES/CHORUS OF THE
PITIES.
 SPIRITS SINISTER AND IRONIC/CHORUSES OF
SINISTER AND IRONIC SPIRITS.
 THE SPIRIT OF RUMOUR/CHORUS OF RUMOURS.
 GEORGE THE THIRD.
 The Duke of Cumberland
 Lord Chancellor Eldon.
 EARL OF MALMESBURY.
 LORD MULGRAVE.
 TOMLINE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN.
 SIR WALTER FARQUHAR.
 DR. ALEXANDER SCOTT.
 Lieutenant Pasco.
 POLLARD, A MIDSHIPMAN.
 Captain Adair.
 Lieutenants Ram and Whipple.
 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
 DARU, NAPOLEON'S WAR SECRETARY.
 LAURISTON, AIDE-DE-CAMP.
 MONGE, A PHILOSOPHER.
 MURAT, BROTHER-IN-LAW OF NAPOLEON.

 FLAG-CAPTAIN MAGENDIE.
 LIEUTENANT DAUDIGNON.
 LIEUTENANT FOURNIER.
 CARDINAL CAPRARA.
 THE EMPEROR FRANCIS.
 THE ARCHDUKE FERDINAND.
 Prince John of Lichtenstien.
 PRINCE SCHWARZENBERG.
 The Emperor Alexander.
 PRINCE KUTUZOF, RUSSIAN FIELD-MARSHAL.
 COUNT LANGERON.
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  COUNT BUXHOVDEN.
 COUNT MILORADOVICH.
 DOKHTOROF
 Queen Charlotte.
 THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.

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 William Makepeace Thackeray
Facts-
 Thackeray was born in Calcutta, British India, where his father,
Richmond Thackeray was secretary to the Board of Revenue in
the East India Company.
 His mother, Anne Becher, was the daughter of Harriet Becher
and John Harman Becher, who was also a secretary (writer) for
the East India Company.
 Indian popular Marathi politician Bal Thackeray's father Keshav
Sitaram Thackeray was an admirer of William, the India-born
British writer; Keshav later changed his surname from
Panvelkar to "Thackeray".
 Charlotte Brontë dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre to
Thackeray.
 Thackeray's "The Colonel Newcome" was mentioned by Anne
Frank in The Diary of a Young Girl.
 Thackeray left Cambridge in 1830, but some of his earliest
published writing appeared in two university periodicals, The
Snob and The Gownsman.

Works-

 One of his earliest works, "Timbuctoo" (1829), contains a

burlesque upon the subject set for the Cambridge Chancellor's
Medal for English Verse. (The contest was won
by Tennyson with a poem of the same title, "Timbuctoo").
 In the late 1830s Thackeray became a notable contributor of
articles on varied topics to Fraser’s Magazine, The New
Monthly Magazine, and, later, to Punch. His work was unsigned
 or written under such pen names as Mr. Michael Angelo
Titmarsh, Fitz-Boodle, The Fat Contributor, or Ikey Solomons.
 He collected the best of these early writings in Miscellanies, 4
vol. (1855–57). These include-
o The Yellowplush Correspondence, the memoirs and diary
of a young cockney footman written in his own
vocabulary and style. These were adapted for BBC Radio
4 in 2009, with Adam Buxton playing Charles Yellowplush.
o Major Gahagan (1838–39), a fantasy of soldiering in India
o Catherine (1839–40), a burlesque of the popular
“Newgate novels” of romanticized crime and low life, and
itself a good realistic crime story. The Newgate
novels (or Old Bailey novels) were novels published in
England from the late 1820s until the 1840s that
glamorised the lives of the criminals they portrayed. Most
drew their inspiration from the Newgate Calendar, a
biography of famous criminals published during the late
18th and early 19th centuries.
o The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty
Diamond (1841).
o The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844; revised as The Memoirs
of Barry Lyndon, 1856), which is a historical novel and his
first full-length work.
o The Book of Snobs (1848) is a collection of articles that
had appeared successfully in Punch (as “The Snobs of
England, by One of Themselves,” 1846–47). It consists of
sketches of London characters and displays Thackeray’s
skill in quick character-drawing.
o The Rose and the Ring, Thackeray’s Christmas book for
1855, remains excellent entertainment.
 With Vanity Fair (1847–48), the first work published under his
own name, Thackeray adopted the system
of publishing a novel serially in monthly parts that had been so
successfully used by Dickens.
o Set in the second decade of the 19th century, the period
of the Regency (The Regency era of British
history officially spanned the years 1811 to 1820.
King George III succumbed to mental illness in late 1810
and, by the Regency Act 1811, his eldest son George,
Prince of Wales, was appointed prince regent to discharge
royal functions. Linked with refinement of culture in the
upper classes but poverty and rise in slums in industrial
towns) , the novel deals mainly with the interwoven
fortunes of two contrasting women, Amelia
Sedley and Becky Sharp.
o The latter, an unprincipled adventuress, is the leading
personage and is perhaps the most memorable character
Thackeray created.
o Subtitled “A Novel Without a Hero,” the novel is
deliberately antiheroic: Thackeray states that in this novel
his object is to “indicate . . . that we are for the most part
. . . foolish and selfish people . . . all eager after vanities.”
o The wealthy, wellborn, passive Amelia Sedley and the
ambitious, energetic, scheming, provocative, and
essentially amoral Becky Sharp, daughter of a poor
drawing master, are contrasted in their fortunes and
reactions to life, but the contrast of their characters is not
the simple one between moral good and evil—both are
presented with dispassionate sympathy.
o Becky is the character around whom all the men play
their parts in an upper middle-class and aristocratic
background.
o Amelia marries George Osborne, but George, just before
he is killed at the Battle of Waterloo, is ready to desert his
young wife for Becky, who has fought her way up through
society to marriage with Rawdon Crawley, a young officer
of good family. Crawley, disillusioned, finally leaves Becky,
 and in the end virtue apparently triumphs, Amelia marries
her lifelong admirer, Colonel Dobbin, and Becky settles
down to genteel living and charitable works.
 Thackeray’s conclusion for the novel: “Ah! Vanitas
Vanitatum! (disillusionment and pessimism) Which of us is
happy in this world? Which of us has his desire, or having it, is
satisfied? --come, children, let us shut up the box and the
puppets, for our play is played out.”
 Successful and famous, Thackeray went on to exploit two lines
of development opened up in Vanity Fair: a gift for evoking
the London scene and for writing historical novels that
demonstrate the connections between past and present.
 He began with the first, writing The History of Pendennis (1848–
50), which is partly fictionalized autobiography
(Bildungsroman). In it, Thackeray traces the youthful career of
Arthur Pendennis—his first love affair, his experiences at
“Oxbridge University,” his working as a London journalist, and
so on—achieving a convincing portrait of a much-tempted
young man.
 Turning to the historical novel, Thackeray chose the reign
of Queen Anne for the period of The History of Henry Esmond,
Esq., 3 vol. (1852). In Thackeray's own day some
commentators, such as Anthony Trollope, ranked his History of
Henry Esmond as his greatest work.
 The story, narrated by Esmond, begins when he is 12, in 1691,
and ends in 1718. Its complexity of incident is given unity by
Beatrix and Esmond, who stand out against a background of
London society and the political life of the time.
 Beatrix, appearing as a charming child, develops beauty
combined with a power that is fatal to the men she loves.
Esmond, a sensitive, brave, aristocratic soldier, falls in love with
her but is finally disillusioned. Other important characters are
Lord and Lady Castlewood.
 Written in an imitation of 18th-century prose, the novel is one
of the best evocations in English of the atmosphere of a past
age.
 It was not well received, however—Esmond’s marriage to Lady
Castlewood was criticized. George Eliot called it “the most
uncomfortable book you can imagine.”
 Thackeray returned to the contemporary scene in his novel The
Newcomes (1853–55). The Newcomes is noteworthy for its
critical portrayal of the "marriage market".
 This work is essentially a detailed study of prosperous middle-
class society and is centred upon the family of the title. Col.
Thomas Newcome returns to London from India to be with his
son Clive.
 The unheroic but attractive Clive falls in love with his cousin
Ethel, but the love Clive and Ethel have for each other is fated
to be unhappily thwarted for years because of worldly
considerations.
 Clive marries Rose Mackenzie; the selfish, greedy, cold-hearted
Barnes Newcome, Ethel’s father and head of the family,
intrigues against Clive and the Colonel; and the Colonel invests
his fortune imprudently and ends as a pensioner in an
almshouse.
 Rose dies in childbirth, and the narrative ends with the
Colonel’s death.
 In a short epilogue Thackeray tells us that Clive and Ethel
eventually marry.
 The Virginians (1857–59), Thackeray’s next novel, is set partly
in America and partly in England in the latter half of the 18th
century and is concerned mostly with the variations in the lives
of two brothers, George and Henry Warrington, who are the
grandsons of Henry Esmond, the hero of his earlier novel. It is
considered to be a sequel to Esmond.
 Thackeray wrote two other serial novels, Lovel the
Widower (1860) and The Adventures of Philip (1861–62).
 He died after having begun writing the novel Denis Duval.
  In 1860, Thackeray became editor of the newly
established Cornhill Magazine, but he was never comfortable in
the role, preferring to contribute to the magazine as the writer
of a column called "Roundabout Papers".
 Thackeray wrote and illustrated five Christmas books as "by Mr
M. A. Titmarsh". They were collected under the pseudonymous
title and his real name no later than 1868.

1. Mrs. Perkins's Ball (1846), as by M. A. Titmarsh

2. Our Street
3. Doctor Birch and His Young Friends
4. The Kickleburys on the Rhine (Christmas 1850) – "a new picture
book, drawn and written by Mr M. A. Titmarsh”
5. The Rose and the Ring (Christmas 1854)

Other works-

Novellas

 Elizabeth Brownbridge
 Sultan Stork
 Little Spitz
 The Yellowplush Papers (1837)
 The Professor
 Miss Löwe
 The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan
 The Fatal Boots
 Cox’s Diary
 The Bedford-Row Conspiracy
 The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond
 The Fitz-Boodle Papers
 The Diary of C. Jeames de la Pluche, Esq. with his letters
 A Legend of the Rhine
 A Little Dinner at Timmins's
 Rebecca and Rowena (1850), a parodic sequel to Ivanhoe
 Bluebeard's Ghost

Sketches and satires

 The Irish Sketchbook (2 Volumes) (1843)

 The Book of Snobs (1848)
 Flore et Zephyr
 Roundabout Papers
 Some Roundabout Papers
 Charles Dickens in France
 Character Sketches
 Sketches and Travels in London
 Mr. Brown's Letters
 The Proser
 Miscellanies

Play

 The Wolves and the Lamb

Travel writing

 Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo (1846), under the

name Mr M. A. Titmarsh.
 The Paris Sketchbook (1840), featuring Roger Bontemps
 The Little Travels and Roadside Sketches (1840)

Other non-fiction

 The English Humorists of the 18th Century (1853)

 Four Georges (1860-1861)
 Roundabout Papers (1863)
 The Orphan of Pimlico (1876)
 Sketches and Travels in London
 Stray Papers: Being Stories, Reviews, Verses, and Sketches (1821-
1847)
 Literary Essays
 The English Humorists of the 18th century: a series of
lectures (1867)
 Ballads
 Miscellanies
 Stories
 Burlesques
 Character Sketches
 Critical Reviews
 Second Funeral of Napoleon

Poems

 The Pigtail
 The Mahogany Tree (1847)
 20th Century British Fiction

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Born in Bombay and educated in Devonshire, Kipling was a journalist

with versatile talent which is found in his later prose and verse.
Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901) is considered one of the greatest novels
of the twentieth century is also known for his works such as The
Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book. His poem "The White
man’s Burden” makes it a significant phrase which is being used by
other writers in a variety of ways in the post-colonial context.

In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, as the first

English-language writer to receive the prize, and at 41, its youngest
recipient to date. He has also written numerous short stories that
includes Plain Tails from the Hills, Soldiers Three, Many Inventions,
The Day's Work, the two Jungle Books, Captain Courageous, Stalky
and Co., Just so Stories, Puck of Pook's Hill, the Man who Would be
King etc.

Kim (1901): This novel presents a vivid picture of Indian life. Kim
(short for Kimbal O'Hara), orphaned son of an Irish soldier becomes a
street urchin of Lahore, meets a Tibetan Lama and accompanies him
in his travels. Recognised, he is adopted by his father's Irish regiment
and sent to school. The Colonel notices the boy's aptitude for secret
service and assigns him to the Indian agent Hurree Babu. While still
very young. Kim captures the papers of some Russian spies in the
Himalayas.

The Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri opined it the best story (in
English) about India itself in the words singling out Kipling's
appreciation of the ecological force of "the win setting of the
mountains and the plain...an unbreakable articulation between the
Himalayas and the Indo-Gangetic plain".
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Jungle Books- The two Jungle Books relate the story of Mowgli, a
child brought up by wolves, and taught the law and lore of the jungle
by Balu (Bhalu) the bear, and by Bagheera, the black panther. Kipling
has endowed the animals warh memorable individuality.

E.M. Forster (1879-1970)

Edward Morgan Forster was born in London on 1st January 1879. He

graduated from King's College. He authored only five novels as
mentioned further. In his first novel Where Angels Fear to Tread
(1905) he made an attempt to present the idea that man should be
in touch with the land to cultivate his imagination. The Longest
Journey (1907) was the next one which was comic in its tone. A Room
with a View (1908) concerns itself with the experience of a young
British woman, Lucy Honeychurch, in Italy. However, Forster's first
major success was Howards End (1910), a novel centred on the
alliance between the liberal Schlegel sisters and Ruth Wilcox, the
proprietor of the titular house, against her husband, Henry Wilcox,
an enterprising businessman. The novel ends with the marriage of
Henry Wilcox to Margaret Schlegel, who brings him back to Howards
End, re-establishing the Wilcox land link

Forster's next major work is A Passage to India (1924) which was

published in 1924. This novel examines the British colonial
occupation of India, but rather than developing a political focus,
explores the friendship between an Indian doctor and British
schoolmaster during a trial against the doctor. based on a false
charge. A Passage to India is the last novel Forster published during
his lifetime, but two other works remained, the incomplete Arctic
Summer, and the unpublished complete novel Maurice, which was
written 1914, but published in 1971 after Forster's death. Forster
published several anthologies of short stories, including The Celestial
Omnibus (1914) and The Eternal Moment (1928), two collections of
short stories, Abinger Harvest (1956), a collection of poetry, essavs

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and fiction, and several non-fictions works. Forster's Aspects of the
Novel (1927) is an important contribution to the craft of fiction.

A Passage to India (1924): Consisted of 37 chapters, the novel

features four characters: Dr. Aziz, his British friend Mr. Cyril Fielding.
Mrs. Moore, and Miss Adela Quested. During a trip to the fictitious
Marabar Caves Adela think she finds herself alone with Dr. Aziz in
one of the caves, and subsequently panics and flees; it is assumed
that D Aziz has attempted to sexually assault her. In fact, Aziz was in
an entirely different cave at the time. Aziz's its run-up and aftermath,
bring to a boil the common racial tensions and prejudices between
Indians and the ho rule India The novel won the 1924 James Tait
Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Throughout the novel a question
dominantly echoes "Is it possible for the Indian and the Englishman
to be friends?"

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Somerset Maugham was of Irish ancestry though he was born in

Paris and known for his short stories which were much evocative in
their content and style. Most of his short stories are set in the
remote areas of the British Empire.

Maugham received his education in King's School in Canterbury, Kent

and then in Heidelburg University. He then studied in London and
qualified as a Surgeon practicing in later life at St. Thomas Hospital.
His experience in medical practice made him found much material
for his artistic works such as Liza of Lambeth (1897) and also of his
autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage (1915).

During the World War I. Maugham joined the British Red Cross
Ambulance Unit attached to the French Army and his experience of
the War found him much material for his novel Ashenden which was
published in 1928. The Moon and the Six Pence (1919) is a thinly
disguised biography of the Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin.

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Maugham, took to the South Seas. after the end of the War and from
there he collected much material for his later works such as East of
Suer (1922), Our Betters (1923) and The Letter (1927). In 1928,
Maugham returned to France and there wrote his satirical
masterpiece Cakes and Ale (1930), a literary biography within a
novel. His other bestselling novel was The Razor's Edge. It is during
the World War II that Somerset Maugham settled in the United
States and worked on the novel The Razor's Edge.

Cakes and Ale or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930)

Cakes and Ale was first published in serialised form in four issues of
Harper's Bazaar (February, March, April, and June 1930). The story
satirizes London literary circles and has been widely considered a
roman à clef with Maugham as Ashenden, Thomas Hardy as Driffield,
and Hugh Walpole as Kear. The story is told by Willie Ashenden, a
character who previously appeared in Maugham's short-story
collection Ashenden. A novelist, Ashenden is befriended by the
ambitious, self-serving Alroy Kear, who has been commissioned to
write an official biography of the famous novelist Edward Driffield.
Kear believes that he must ignore the less-than-noble aspects of his
subject's life in order to write a best seller. Driffield's first wife, Rosie
who is a vital, open-hearted, and generous but too amoral to fit into
Kear's narrow understanding of human behavior, is the cupboard
skeleton of the subtitle and the novel's other principal character.

Of Human Bondage (1915): Maugham had borrowed the title of his

book from Spinoza. The novel is a coming-of-age story of Philip
Carey, a sensitive young man consumed by an unrequited and self-
destructive love. He is born with a clubfoot and an orphan: he is
raised by unsympathetic relatives. Sent to a boarding school where
he has difficulty fitting, in, he grows up with an intense longing for
love, art, and experience After failing to become an artist in Paris, he
begins medical studies in London, where he meets Mildred, a cold-
hearted waitress with whom he falls into a powerful, tortured, life-
altering love affair.

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This is the most autobiographical of Maugham's works, with Philip's
malformed foot standing in for Maugham's stutter, and the
character's painful romantic struggles inspired by the author's own
intense love affairs with both men and women.

Aldous Leonard Hurley (1894-1963)

Huxley was the nephew of Matthew Arnold. Aldous Leonard Huxley

was one of the greatest intellectual thinkers of the early twentieth
century and his works are a proof of his intellect. Huxley was a
humanist and pacifist. The effect of these two elements is seen in his
work the Perennial Philosophy (1932). His first novel is Chrome
Yellow (1921) and other are Antic Hay (1923). Those Barren Leaves
(1925) and Point Counter Point (1928) deals with the disillusionment
with the post war generations and portray the disgusting and
pessimistic pictures of human degradation Huxley's next novel The
Brave New World (1932) presents the vision of utopia by satirizing
the scientific utopia. In his next novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) he
portrays his faith in the life of the spirit. His later works After Many a
Summer (1939) and Time Must Have a Stop (1944) also show the
ironical sketches of the contemporary society.

His last novel Island (1962) is a good example of dystopian fiction. He

was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times and was
elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in
1962. The later novels of Huxley include Ape and Essence, The Genius
and the Goddess, Brave New World Revisited, Island.

Point Counter Point (1928): The longest novel of Huxley is a roman a

clef which features many real people who were known to him. The
novel is made up of many interlinking plots telling about the vision of
life from a number of different points of view, using a large cast of
characters who are compared to instruments in an orchestra, each
playing his separate portion of the larger piece. The character Philip
Quarles explains the author's motive in the novel. Among the

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characters Mark Rampion is based on D H Lawrence, Maurice
Spandrell on Charles Baudelaire etc.

Brave New World (1932): The novel is a satire ridiculing the scientific
Utopia of H G Wells. The title of the novel is derived from Miranda’s
speech in The Tempest (Act V, scene i). In this world of the future
men are scientifically conditioned to perfect happiness. Human
babies are not born; they are decanted out of text tubes. They are
treated chemically according to the function they will perform as
grownups. They are divided into four classes: Alpha, Beta, Delta and
Epsilon which is a classification in an appropriate hierarchy. The
numbers of these members in every class is regulated by the need.
All civilized comforts, including unlimited sex, are provided for each
class according to its status in the hierarchy. There are medication
for fatigue, helicopters for transportation and feelies (cinema like
things) for entertainment. The era is known as Our Ford The novel
takes a turn when a savage from outlawed society comes to this
world and quotes Shakespeare and finds an utter lack of art, beauty
and religion. In utter despair in such a world and being taken in
custody due to his efforts of spreading his ideas of art and beauty, he
commits suicide.

Island (1962): Huxley introduces an island in the novel which is

inhabited by people of mixed race how are fully aware of man's
weaknesses as well his potentialities. They find their formula of
happiness in a philosophy which is a judicious mixture of Eastern
religion and Western science.

Hugh Walpole (1884-1941)

Hugh Walpole, born in New Zealand in 1884, was the son of a Bishop,
though at the age of five he migrated to Great Britain. He was
educated at King's School, Canterbury, and Emmanuel College,
Cambridge. Walpole wrote a great deal while at Bracken burn,
including his Cumberland family saga The Herries Chronicle which is a

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collection of six novels based on the saga of generations from
Elizabethan times to the day of present. He wrote 15 volumes of his
diaries which are also thought to be his artistic achievement. The
manuscripts of many of his novels are also in the Museum, along
with work by William Wordsworth and Robert Southey. Hugh
Walpole died in 1941, and his grave is in St. John's Church, Keswick.

His best regarded work is Mr Perrin and Mr Traill (1911). The six
novels of “The Herries Chronicles” are- Rogue Herries, Judith Paris,
The Fortress, Venessa, The Bright Pavilions and Katherine Christian.

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

Mr Lawrence was in opposition to modern civilization, its science and

materialism and always showed the influence of Freud's psychology
of the "Unconscious and 'sex repression'. D. H. Lawrence can be
talked about as a psychological novelist for his frank treatment of sex
and love in his novels. In his lifetime, he is often thought to be
someone who has been obscene and his novel Rainbow (1915) was
charged with obscenity during his times. It is to be remembered that
what was then thought to be obscene was actually nothing but frank
treatment of sexual and psychological norms. E M Forster described
him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation.
Lawrence's first novel The White Peacock (1911) deals with the
unhappy human relationship between man and woman. The
Trespassers (1912) not such a significant work and then comes Sons
and Lovers (1913) which is his most popular novel. It is an
autobiographical novel of great artistic merit.

Next novel The Rainbow (1915) was banned as obscene and it deals
with man - woman relationship Women in Love (1921) reveals
Lawrence's Views upon Life of Aaron's Rod (1922) is a mature work
noted for its artistic excellence. Kangaroo (1923) is set in Australia,
The Boy in the Bush (1924) and Plumed Serpent (1926) is set in
Mexico. Finally, his finest work Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) is an

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artistic revelation of the deep need of modern men and women to
face all the elements in their natures if they were not to live
frustrated and incomplete lives.

Sons and Lovers (1913): The story is a representation of the mother

fixation of its chief protagonist Paul Morel Paul Morel's relationship
with his mother Gertrude affects the relationship that he has with
the women in her life - Miriam and Clara. In the end of the novel
when Paul Morel chooses to look towards the city. he is choosing the
order of the father and getting over his mother fixation. D. H.
Lawrence himself suffered from the same problem and therefore by
writing this novel he is doing a therapy on himself by which he is
getting over his own problems. Moreover; Sons and Lovers is a
colliery novel dealing with the life in the coal mines and therefore
often is termed as a great sociological portrayal.

The Rainbow (1915): The novel tells about the three generations of
the Brangwen family living in Nottinghamshire. The story of Tom and
Lydia is given in the first generation. Will and Anna in the second and
their daughter Ursula in the third generation. Due to the frank
treatment of sexual desire in the novel it was banned in Britain in
1915 for almost 11 years as a result of which 1,011 copies were
seized and burnt. The Rainbow was followed by a sequel in 1920,
Women in Love.

Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928): The novel is about Lady Chatterley, a

young married woman whose upper class husband, Sir Clifford
Chatterley has been paralysed from the waist down due to a Great
War injury. Her emotional and physical frustration leads her into an
affair with the gamekeeper. Oliver Mellors. The novel is about
Constance's realization that she cannot live with the mind alone she
must also be alive physically The realization gives birth to a thought
that love can only happen with the element of the body, not the
mind.

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Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Virginia Woolf's first two novels are The Voyage Out and Night and
Day. They are written in a largely traditional Victorian style but soon
she realized that modern sensibilities do not fit the traditional mould
of the genre of novel and there is a need for making new ways in
which the modern sensibilities could be portrayed. She therefore
used the stream of consciousness technique in Jacob's Room (1922).
In this novel Virginia Woolf uses the technique of Interior Monologue
to represent the psychic consciousness of the protagonist Jacob. The
novel was accepted by the readers gleefully and this made Woolf
further refine the technique in her next novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925).

Virginia Wolf's To the Lighthouse (1927) also deals with the

psychological lives of its protagonist and here the novelist shows a
greater skill over the “Stream of Consciousness Technique”. Even the
novel The Waves, written in 1931, is a significant novel dealing with
the theme of stream of consciousness. In this novel The Waves
Virginia Woolf studies six characters through a series of Internal
Monologues. Her later works Flush (1933), The Years (1937) and the
unfinished Between the Acts (1941) are also great experiments in the
stream of consciousness technique. Even her work, Orlando: a
Biography (1928) is a popular work.

Mrs Dalloway (1925): In Mrs. Dalloway, like that of James Joyce in

his novel Ulysses, Virginia Woolf confines her narrative to twenty
four hours and one city. In Ulysses it is Dublin, in Mrs. Dalloway it is
London. Mrs. Dalloway deals with the life of Clarrisa Dalloway and
that of a war victim Septimus Warren Smith. It is an interesting
portrayal of the inner lives of the protagonists. Clarissa is to host a
party and making preparations during it she passes through the sea
of time related to inter-war social structure. The whole novel takes
place in on a single day of June 1923.

To the Light House (1927): The novel is divided into three different

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parts: the Window, Time Passes and the Lighthouse. The novel deals
with the relationship of the members of the Ramsay Family and the
family's visit to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.
In the first part, Mrs Ramsay's view towards world is shown as how
she presides over her children and a group of guests on a summer
holiday. The second part tells the changes in the summer home over
a decade and the final part tells about the return of the Ramsay
children who are grown and Lily Briscoe, a painter and friend of the
family.

Orlando: A Biography (1928): The novel is a kind of English history

from the Elizabethan days to modern times expressed by a character,
an immortal who from male becomes female exactly half way
through the book. The eponymous hero is born as a male nobleman
in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. At the age of 50, a change
in sex occurs and thence he lives for more than 300 years.

James Joyce (1882-1941)

James Joyce was an Irish novelist who was born in Dublin, Ireland on
2 February 1882. He finished his graduation from University College
Dublin and immigrated from Ireland to Paris where he worked as a
journalist and a teacher.

He was a musician, had a flair for languages which he taught for

sometime in Italy and Switzerland and finally settled in Paris.
His first major work was Chamber Music (1904) a collection of thirty-
six love poems which was later included in Imagist Anthology by Ezra
Pound. Next comes his collection of twelve short stories dealing with
the city of Dublin, named Dubliners (1914). It primarily talks about
the moral stagnation of the Dublin society.

Joyce then ventured into novel writing and became one of the most
venerated novelists of the twentieth century with his three novels - A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922) and

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Finnegan's Wake (1939). Joyce died in Zurich on 13th January 1941.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916):The novel deals with

the formative years of Joyce's own life and is therefore semi-
autobiographical. This revealed Joyce as a rebel who broke all ties
with Ireland, its society, religion and politics. It deals with the life of
Stephen Dedalus as he grows up in Dublin.

Ulysses (1922): The novel deals with the protagonist Leopard Bloom
and one day of his life, 16 June 1904 dealing with the three main
characters: a Jew named Leopold Bloom who is an advertisement
canvasser. his musical wife Molly bloom and a young poet Stephen
Dedalus (the same character is found in 4 Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man). The character of Stephens is a reflection of Joyce
himself. In this novel, James Joyce deals with the stream of
consciousness technique The novel was banned in England until 1936
due to acts of indecencies. Each chapter of the novel appears to have
some resemblance to the Homer's Odyssey.

Finnegan's Wake (1939): It is considered to be Joyce’s most

significant work though it is thought to incomprehensible as it has a
difficult style which is most difficult to read
The novel is a combined form of dream and reality. The beginning of
the book introduces Mr and Mrs Porter and their three children
Kevin and Jerry who are twins and lssy. As they go to sleep the novel
takes multiple turns through their dreams. The novel also introduces
a construction worker Finnegan Wake who died at his place.

Arthur Coman Doyle (1859-1930)

Arthur Conan Doyle, a Scottish novelist is best known for the

creation of his detective fiction, Sherlock Holmes series.
The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in
the field of crime fiction. While a medical student, Conan Doyle was
deeply impressed by the skill of his professor, Dr Joseph Bell, in

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observing the most minute detail regarding a patient's condition.
This master of diagnostic deduction became the model for Conan
Doyle's literary creation, Sherlock Holmes, who first appeared in A
Study in Scarlet, a novel-length story.

He continued writing Sherlock Holmes adventures through 1926. His

short stories were collected in several volumes, and he also wrote
novels The Hound of the Baskervilles, that feature Holmes and his
assistant, Dr Watson.

His historical novels include Sir Nigel and its follow-up The White
Company, set in the Middle Ages. He was a prolific author of short
stories, including two collections set in Napoleonic times featuring
the French Character Brigadier Gerard. Conan Doyle also engaged
into writing nonfiction and his travels but they all overshadowed due
to the rising popularity of Holmes series. Conan Doyle detailed what
he valued most in life in his autobiography, Memories and
Adventures (1924) and the importance that books held for him in
Through the Magic Door (1907).

Graham Greene (1904-1991)

He is one of the most outstanding novelists after the Second World

War. His novels always reflect the idea that man is inherently evil
(original sin) and nothing but God's grace can save him. His
remarkable novels are It's a Battlefield (1934), England Made Me
(1935), Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The
Heart of the Matter (1948), The End of the Affair (1951), The Quiet
American (1955), A Burnt - Out Case (1961), The Comedians (1966),
Travels With My Aunt (1969) and Shades of Greene (1976).

Greene is mainly concerned with evil and its endless conflict with
righteousness. In Brighton Rock he suggests the possibility of the
extension of grace to even a vicious believer. In Power and Glory, a
Mexican priest, who falls far short of being an ideal character, is a

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force for good by reason of his unwavering faith.

The Power and the Glory (1940): The novel is set in the city of
Mexico. The story revolves around an outlawed priest who is
drunken, depraved and cowardly and fathers a child. He is
undoubtedly a sinner, but he will be saved just because he is a priest,
a divine instrument who gives the Sacrament and can turn bread and
wine into the body and blood of Christ.

The Heart of the Matter (1948): The novel studies the effect of a
conscience - ridden Englishman of an adulterous affair into which he
drifts largely out of pity and of his final attempt to escape from his
unbearable spiritual dilemma by the theologically dubious method of
suicide. The setting is South Africa in war time Scobie, a married
police officer, befriends a helpless young wadow who becomes his
mistress. The priest at his funeral, however, says that God sill vet
save him in spite of the sin of suicide, the gravest a Catholic can
commit. This is the heart of the matter.

The End of the Affair (1951): In this the Catholic argument is pushed
to the extreme. A London adulteress (inevitably a Catholic) dies
unrepentant and then strange things happen. A man who had loved
her is miraculously rid of an ugly birthmark: a boy who has a book of
hers recovers from an incurable disease. The strangest of all miracles
is that the narrator, a determined atheist, still burns with such a
passion for her that he curses the powers that have taken her away,
and in so doing becomes for the first time aware of God. Even hatred
of God is a blessing. It is a kind of conversion.

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)

He was an outstanding satirist who castigated a world which had no

values except the need to make money and have fun. His early
novels are remarkable for hilarious incidents and vigorous dialogues.
Decline and Fall (1928), Vile Bodies (1930), A Black Mischief (1932),

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Scoop (1938) and Put Out More Flags (1942) are his famous and
vigorous satires. The Loved One (1948) is a bitter farcical satire on
American funeral customs and the double fadedness of affluent
American society. His later novels Brideshead Revisited (1945) show
signs of maturity. Waugh is chiefly noted for his war trilogy Sword of
Honour (1965). Triology- Men at Arms (1952) Officers and Gentlemen
(1955) and Unconditional Surrender (1961). The general note is still
of sardonic satire but there is a feeling of seriousness for the loss of
ideals and values in the post - war world. Waugh, like Graham
Greene, was a Roman Catholic, and his novels, too have religious
implications.

A Handful of Dust (1934): The story centres around the protagonist,

Tony Last, an English country squire, who, having been betrayed by
his wife and seen his illusions shattered one by one. joins an
expedition to the Brazilian jungle, only to find himself trapped in a
remote outpost as the prisoner of a maniac. Waugh even included
his own experiences as his own recent desertion by his wife. He even
used his experiences of his travelling to the South American interior
in 1933-34 and also many incidents. Tony's singular fate in the jungle
was first used by Waugh as the subject of an independent short
story, published in 1933 under the title "The Man Who Liked
Dickens".

Sword of Honour (1965): The trilogy takes place during World War II
and is the story of Guy Crouchback, an Englishman from an old,
established Roman Catholic family who feels isolated from the rest of
the world. He volunteers for service in the war because he believes
that it is a noble effort, but he soon becomes disillusioned when he
witnesses only chaos and ignoble actions. He is dismayed at a world
where heroic actions lead to disgrace and cowardice is rewarded.
Despite this disillusionment, however, he gradually changes from a
loner to a man of compassion as he decides to do what he can for
those around him. The story revolves around his life with his wife
Virginia, how she leaves him, disillusioned acts at war and how he

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finally with much moral courage remarries his wife who is carrying
another man's child.

George Orwell (1903-50)

George Orwell was born as Eric Arthur Blair in Motihari, Bihar, India.
Orwell's father worked for the Opium Department of the Civil Service
in Motihari. His mother took him to England when he was only one.
Orwell received his education at Eton College, England, after his
studies, he began work as an imperial policeman in Burma.
However, his tryst with British imperialism and his disgust for it,
prompted him to resign from the post and return to England in 1928.
Orwell's first work, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) was a
non-fictional memoir on the theme of poverty that he had
experienced in these two cities after leaving Burma. His experiences
in Burma also found expression in his first novel, Burmese Days. This
novel presented a portrait of the dark side of the British Raj-Orwell's
critique of British Imperialism also found an outlet in his essays “A
Hanging and Shooting an Elephant.”

Orwell was a socialist and his works reflect beliefs against

totalitarianism. In a 1947 essay, he wrote that every line he had
written since 1936 had been directly or indirectly, totalitarianism and
for democratic Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an allegorical novel
that reflects on the events leading up to and during the Stalin era. It
is a satire on Russian Revolution and indictment of communism.
Orwell's second most famous novel, Nineteen Eight Four (1949) is a
dystopian novel that depicts a society tyrannized by a totalitarian
government. Orwell died at the age of 46 from tuberculosis.

Animal Farm (1945): Animal Farm was published on the heels of

World War I, in England in 1945 and in the United States in 1946. He
wrote the book during the war as a cautionary fable in order to
expose the seriousness of the dangers posed by Stalinism and
totalitarian government. It is George Orwell's satire on equality,

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where all barnyard animals live free from their human master'
tyranny Inspired to rebel by Major, an old boar, animals on Mr. Jones
Manor Farm Embrace Animalism and stage a revolution to achieve
an idealistic state of justice and progress. The novel is an allegory,
which is a story in which concrete and specific characters and
situations stand for other characters and situations. so as to make a
point about them.

The main action of Animal Farm stands for the Russian Revolution of
1917 and the early years of the Soviet Union. Animalism is really
communism. Manor Farm is allegorical Russia and the farmer Mr.
Jones is the Russian Czar. Old Major stands for either Karl Marx or
Vladimir Lenin and the pig named Snowball represents the
intellectual revolutionary Leon Trotsky.
Napoleon stands for Stalin, while the dogs are his secret police.

Nineteen Eight-Four (1949): Winston Smith lives in what is known as

Airstrip One, formerly Britain, a province of a large nation-state
known as Oceania. Posters everywhere declare BIG BROTHER IS
WATCHING YOU, and “Thought Police” could be anywhere, watching
for signs of “Thought Crime”. Smith works at the Ministry of Truth
changing historical texts to match the current propaganda being
distributed by the government.

Winston longs to rebel, but confines his rebellion to keeping a

forbidden journal, which he writes in a comer of his apartment
hidden from the two-way television screen on his wall. At work,
Winston meets a woman named Julia and begins a forbidden love
affair, meeting her in a room he rents above a shop in the midst of
the non-party population, known as proles. At work. Winston
suspects that his superior, a man named O'Brien, is involved with a
resistance movement called The Brotherhood, led by a mysterious
man named Emmanuel Goldstein. Winston's suspicions are
confirmed when O'Brien invites him and Julia to join The
Brotherhood, but this turns out to be a ruse and the pair are

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arrested.
Winston is brutally tortured. He slowly gives up all outward
resistance but preserves what he believes is an inner core of his true
self symbolized by his feelings for Julia. In the end he is confronted
by his worst fear, a terror of rats and betrays Julia by begging his
torturers to do it to her instead, Broken, Winston is returned to
public life, a true believer.

William Golding (1911-1993)

He belonged to the genre of the philosophical apologue rather than

the novel as social history. The central theme of his novels is the
problem of evil and its threats to individual and social existence. In
1980, he was awarded the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage, the first
novel that became part of his sea trilogy, To the Ends of the Earth. He
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983.

His best and most popular novel Lord of the Flies (1954) traces with
horrifying persuasiveness the emergence of destructiveness in a
group of well-bred English boys marooned on a tropical island during
the atomic war. The Inheritors (1955) shows how a few survivors of a
primitive race are destroyed by a more civilized but more
successfully destructive people. Pincher Martin (1956). Free Fall
(1959) and The Scorpion God (1971) are studies of individuals who
deliberately choose evil and fall into the hell. Goldings tone and
manner were classical. Lionel Poles Hartley (1895 -1972) was a fine
craftsman, who wrote of denaturalized humanity characterized by a
sense of loneliness. His famous novels are The Go-Between (1953),
The Hireling (1957), The Betrayed (1966) and The Harness Room
(1971).

Golding's novels Rites of Passage (1980), Close Quarters (1987), and

Fire Down Below (1989) constitute a trilogy of nautical relational
novels entitled To the Ends of the Earth set on a former British man-
of-war transporting migrants to Australia in the early 19th century

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The novels explore themes of class (assumed status) and man's
reversion to savagery.

Lord of the Flies (1954): The book focuses on a group of British boys
stranded on an uninhibited land and their disastrous attempt to
govern themselves. In the novel British schoolboys are stranded on a
tropical island due to a plane crash. In an attempt to recreate the
culture, they left behind, they elect Ralph to lead, with the
intellectual Piggy as counsellor. But Jack wants to lead, too, and one-
by-one, he lures the boys from civility and reason to the savage
survivalism of primeval hunters.

In Lord of the Flies, William Golding gives us a glimpse of the

savagery that underlies even the most civilized human beings. The
novel is an allegory, which is a story in which characters, settings,
and events stand for things larger than themselves. For example, the
island represents the world, Ralph and Jack symbolize different
approaches to leadership.

The novel conveys that humans are essentially barbaric if not

downright evil. The stranded boys begin by establishing a society
similar to the one they left behind in England, but soon their society
has degenerated into rival clans ruled by fear and violence; before
the book is over, three boys have been killed. William Golding wrote
Lord of the Flies following World War II, during which the Nazis
exterminated six million Jews and the United States dropped two
atomic bombs on Japan.

Darkness Visible (1979): The novel is popular for winning the James
Tait Black Memorial Prize. The title comes from Paradise Lost, from
the line, "No light, but rather darkness visible". The novel narrates a
struggle between good and evil, using sexuality and spirituality
throughout. It is centred on Matty - introduced in chapter one as a
naked child emerging horribly disfigured from a bomb explosion
during the London Blitz in World War II.

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Anthony Powell (1905-2000)

Powell is best known for his autobiographical and satiric 12-volume

series of novels- A Dance to the Music of Time. He wrote A Question
of Upbringing (1951), A Buyers Marker (1952), The Acceptance World
(1955) and The Kindly Ones (1962). Powell writes in a witty and
epigrammatic style about the peculiarities and snobbery of the upper
middle classes.

A Dance to the Music of Time: The novel sequence is a 12 volume

cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the
same name by Nicolas Poussin and published between 1951 and
1975 to critical acclaim. The story is an often comic examination of
movements and manners. power and passivity in English political,
cultural and military life in the mid-20th century.

It depicts the Four Seasons dancing to music played by Father Time.

Nicholas Jenkins, a nonparticipant who is secure in his own values,
narrates much of the action of the characters, who are obsessed
with power, style, creativity, and public image.

12 Novels of A Dance to the Music of Time:

A Question of Upbringing (1951)

A Buyer’s Market (1952)
The Acceptance World (1955)
At Lady Molly's(1957)
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1960)
The Kindly Ones (1962)
The Valley of Bones (1964)
The Soldier's Art (1966)
The Military Philosophers (1968)
Books Do Furnish a Room (1971)
Temporary Kings (1973)

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Hearing Secret Harmonies (1975)
Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)

The British novelist, Iris Murdoch was born in 1919 just after a year
of First World War. She was also a philosopher and her first novel
Under the Net published in 1954 gained widespread accolades. Miss
Murdoch's novels are curious but at their best effective blends of
wit, eroticism, fantasy and symbolism. Under the Net (1954) gives an
interesting picture of the Angry Young Man rushing after affluence
and seeking truth where no truth exists. The Sandcastle (1957) and
The Bell (1958) are tightly constructed studies of human
relationships. A Severed Head (1961) seems to be a modern comedy
of erotic manners. Sex and sexual symbolism are freely used in An
Unofficial Rose (1962), The Unicorn (1963), An Accidental Man (1971)
and The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her other books
include The Red and the Green (1965), The Nice and the Good (1968),
The Black Prince (1973), Henry and Cato (1976), The Sea, the Sea
(1978. Booker Prize), The Philosopher's Pupil (1983), The Good
Apprentice (1985), The Book and the Brotherhood (1987), The
Message to the Planet (1989), and The Green Knight (1993)

Under The Net (1954): The first novel presents the story of a young
writer, Jake Donaghue. The novel is dedicated to Raymond Queneau.
The novel falls into the genre of the picaresque, a comedic form in
which a ciever. lower-class protagonist makes his way up in the
world using his wits.

The novel revolves around the themes of work, love, weath and
fame. The protagonist Jake struggles to improve his circumstances
and make up for past mistakes by reconnecting with his old
acquaintance Hugo Bellfounder, a mild mannered and soft-spoken
philosopher. Jake tracks down his ex-girlfriend, Anna Quentin, and
her elegant sister, an actress named Sadie. He also reacquaints
himself with Hugo, whose philosophy Jake had long ago
presumptuously tried to decipher and interpret to his own liking. The

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plot develops through a series of adventures involving Jake and his
offbeat minion, Finn. From the kidnapping of a movie-star canine to
the staging of a political riot on a film set, Jake attempts to discover
and incorporate Hugo's abstruse philosophies. Berated yet
enlightened, Jake's aspirations to become a true writer/ philosopher
may at last be at hand.

The Sea the Sea (1978): The novel revolves around the story of
Charles Arrowby, the protagonist of the story. =He is a self-satisfied
playwright and director who, in the novel, begins to write his
memoirs. Charles Arrowby decides to withdraw from the world and
live in seclusion in a house by the sea. While there, he encounters his
first love, Mary Hartley Fitch, whom he has not seen since his love
affair with her as an adolescent. Although she is almost
unrecognizable in old age, and outside his theatrical world, he
becomes obsessed by her, idealizing his former relationship with her
and attempting to persuade her to elope with him His inability to
recognize the egotism and selfishness of his own romantic ideals is at
the heart of the novel The chief character is left to think deeply
about the rejection of Mrs Fitch whom he kidnapped in his self-
obsessed love.

Kingsley Amis (1922-1995)

He was the father of British novelist Martin Amis. He was until

recently a university lecturer. His novels are Lucky Jim (1954), Take a
Girl Like You (1960), The Anti-Death League (1966) and The Green
Man (1969). His gift of fun and satire is best displayed in Lucky Jim,
his most popular novel.

Lucky Jim (1954): The novel satirises the high-brow academic set of
an unnamed university, through the eyes of its protagonist. Jim
Dixon. a struggling young lecturer of history. He is a blunt
Northerner, a university lecturer in History. He finds his job a sheer
humbug and gives it up. He wins the girl of his dreams after beating

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up his rival. Bertrand, the hypocritical artist son of his elderly and
incompetent Professor. Jim may be lucky. but one feels he is only a
lucky lout.

Anti-Death League (1966): The novel purports to be a war story of

Vietnam, but it is really compact of drink sex, and obscenity. A British
army unit is charged with the execution of Operation Apollo whose
aim is to spread hydrophobia in the Chinese lines. The Operation is
called off at the last minute. Against this background develops the
love affair between Captain James Churchill and Mrs. Catherine
Casement, a widow with lesbian tendencies, which are traced to
sexual frustration. Her cure by this affair is furthered by Lady Hazell,
a rich widow and regular whore whose salon is open to army officers
at all hours. There is also a lot of clinical discussion of homosexuality.
The frequent use of the four-letter word by Catherine is disgusting.

Peter Ackroyd (1949)

The British novelist, critic and biographer is famous for his novels
about English history and culture. His first novel was The Great Fire
of London (1982) which is a reworking of Charles Dickens novel Little
Dorrit. It was followed by The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983),
Hawksmoor (1985), Chatterton (1987), First Light (1989), English
Music (1992), The House of Doctor Dee (1993), The Trial of Elizabeth
Cree: A Novel of the Limehouse Murders (1995), The Fall of Troy
(2006), and Three Brothers (2013).

In 2009, Ackroyd published a reworking of The Canterbury Tales. He

also wrote biographies of William Blake, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot,
Charles Chaplin and Thomas Moore.

Hawksmoor (1985): The mystery novel mainly narrates the story of

two men with the same name (Nicholas) but at different times.
Nicholas Dyer lived in the 1700s and had satanic relationships. He
built churches to offer human sacrifices to devilish forces: he did that

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secretly without telling his manager about his real plans for the
buildings. Another Nicholas Hawksmoor who lived in the 1900s was
responsible for the investigation of horrendous human murders that
had taken place long ago in the same churches Dyer built.

The Great Fire of London (1982): The story is reworking of Little

Dorrit. Ackroyd's story involves a modern filmmaker (with the very
literary name of Spenser Spender) who is trying to make a film of
Dickens's novel, set in a London prison. The project becomes the
focus of the interests of a colorful-and very Dickensian-collection of
characters.

Angela Carter (1940-1992)

The British author whose original name is Angela Olive Stalker is well
known for reshaping motifs from mythology, legends, and fairy tales
in her book coloring them with humor and eroticism. She is chiefly
known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. She
had moderate success with her novels Shadow Dance (1966) and The
Magic Toyshop (1967).

Her other novels include Several Perceptions (1968), The Infernal

Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffian (1972), The Passion of New Eve
(1977), and Wise Children (1991). Her interest in the macabre and
the sensual was reflected in The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in
Cultural History (1979), a polemical study of the female characters in
the writings of the marquis de Sade. She also wrote radio plays,
children's books, and essays.

Ford Mador Ford (1873-1939)

A cruelly neglected because he wrote too much. Ford is now

remembered for his novels The Good Soldier (1915), T=he Parade's
End Tetralogy (1924-28) and The Fifth Queen trilogy (1906-08). His
quartet Parade's End (1924-1928) comprising of Some Do Not, No

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More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up and Last Post deserves a place
among the great works of 20th century fiction. These four novels
trace the career of Christopher Tietjens, "the last Tory against the
background of the first World War. The character is unforgettable.
with his out-moded notions of honour and chavalry However
quixotic he may appear to modern eves, Tietjens is a shining example
of English gentleman of the old vintage. representing something that
is of fundamental value in humanity. He is one of the greatest
characters of modern English fiction.

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