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Hardy is best known for his portrayal of rural English life during the mid and late nineteenth century. By defying convention and making Tess, a simple milkmaid, his tragic heroine, Hardy gave rein to his feelings about nature and rural life: its harshness, beauty and seasonal rythms of death and renewal. Tess was his favourite character. Hardy said of her that he was never able to put on paper all she was or meant to him. Her innocence, betrayal and death signified a much deeper sadness as she symbolised the simple, honest pastoral way of life which, Hardy felt, died with the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
Price: EUR 3.50
Set in rural Victorian England, this is a poignant story of a simple weaver, Silas Marner. Shunned by the villagers of Raveloe, he leads a solitary, miserly life until he finds love and solace through looking after a small girl he finds abandoned on his doorstep one snowy New Year's Eve. Their fates intertwine as she grows up and her true parentage is revealed. Richly symbolic, subtly characterised and deeply moving, "Silas Marner" brings together very human themes of conflict of loyalty, greed and duty with great perception and sensitivity. It remains one of the best loved of the English classics.
Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of the everyday spiritual walk of the Christian. Christian, the hero, begins his quest by forsaking the City of Destruction and setting out for the Celestial City. Along the way, he faces many trials and tribulations before he successfully completes his quest and receives his well-earned reward. By personifying the diverse temptations Christian meets on the way, Bunyan provides a satirical commentary on the nature of human faith. Written in the seventeenth century, it presents a rather provocative, black and white picture of redemption but is still oddly pertinent today.
Price: EUR 9.90
Social stigma in nineteenth century England, in particular illegitimacy is the main theme of this novel. It also deals with disinheritance and women's rights. The heroine, mercurial and unscrupulous Magdalen Vanstone, struggles to reclaim her identity and in doing so exposes how social identity is constructed and how it can be similarly dismantled, buried, borrowed or invented! At the time it was written "No Name" was considered immoral and although full of suspense, it uncovers a multitude of compelling moral, social and legal skeletons in the cupboard of Victorian society.
Price: EUR 12.90
Austen narrates the story of cinderella-like Fanny Price, who, at the age of 10, leaves behind her impoverished family to live with her wealthy relatives in Mansfield Park. She secretly grows to love her cousin Edmund, who is the only one who has been truly kind to her. When a dashing young couple arrives from London, dazzling everyone but Fanny, who suffers quietly as she witnesses Edmund's attraction to the worldly Mary Crawford, rural Mansfield Park becomes the setting of adultery, betrayal, social ruin and ruptured friendships. It is Fanny who is able to bring back some stability into the lives of those around her and also a happy future for herself.
Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead and subjected to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre manages to emerge unbroken in spirit and integrity. Taking up a position as governess at Thornfield Hall, she soon falls in love with its proprietor, Mr. Rochester. This affection is eventually reciprocated, but their plans for lawful marriage are impeded. Jane Eyre flees Thornfield Hall, but due to the heroine's defiance and moral courage, the story has an uplifting ending.
In this tale of colonial exploitation, the narrator, Marlow, travels up the river Congo deep into the heart of partly colonized Africa. During this dangerous journey, Marlow undergoes a profound transfomation in his outlook on human nature. Despite his prejudices about the African continent and its inhabitants, which he describes with condescention and contempt, he is unable to remain indifferent to the cruelty and horror of colonization. Obsessed with finding the mythical Mr. Kurtz who has become famous for his success and ruthlessness in the ivory trade, Marlow hopes this man will be able to justify the horrors that he has encountered. When he finally reaches his goal, Marlow finds a man who has lost contact with moral standards and has plunged himself into insanity and horror. A highly recommendable read, with an exotic mix of moody gloom and complex characters, Conrad's prose is thick and dense like the jungle in which it takes place and will not disappoint anyone who is willing to take the journey.
Frankenstein is a young, idealistic student of natural philosophy who, finding out the secret of giving life to matter, creates a living human being. This monstrous creation, sewn together from parts of dead people, is tender hearted and gentle by nature. But he invokes fear in others and hides away from society. Increasingly lonely and embittered, he takes his revenge on his creator who has disowned and betrayed him. In recounting this chilling tragedy, Mary Shelley demonstrates both the corruption of an innocent creature and the dangers of playing God with science, a theme which is increasingly relevant in modern times.
This was Dicken's favourite novel. Partly autobiographical, he ingeniously uses his own life experience in the tale of the young orphan David Copperfield who grows up in the magical but fearful and grimly realistic world of Victorian England. Persecuted by his stepfather Mr.Murdstone, deceived by his boyhood mentor, the charming but callous Steerforth, impeded by the snivelling clerk, Uriah Heep and infatuated with the sweet but dim-witted Dora, he nevertheless manages to transform his situation into self-awareness, beginning a successful career as an novelist and finding true love along the way.
Flora de Barral is a charming but vulnerable girl, daughter of a bankrupt, parvenu financier, who is forced through tragic circumstances into a life on the high seas. It is there, at her lowest point, where she transforms herself from a tragic figure into a self-respecting woman. Her tale is one of abandonment and betrayal as she struggles to achieve dignity and happiness. Chance is Conrad's only novel featuring a female protagonist.
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This story set in the haunting Wessex landscape is regarded as one of Hardy's finest prose masterpieces. Published in 1874, it is the tragi-comic tale of Bathsheba Everdene and the men who desire her. Their affection for her is manifested in different ways; all three ardently pursue her in the hope that they will ultimately possess her. However, Bathsheba, although blessed with a keen intelligence, is a woman of high spirits and her strong character determines the emotionally complex relationship with each man. She marries and is deserted by the brilliant but erratic Sergeant Troy, is persued relentlessly by the wealthy and obsessed Squire Boldwood, only to find mutual happiness with the enduringly patient shepherd, Gabriel Oak. It is characteristic of Hardy to remind us of the natural cosmic setting of our lives. Therefore, often in his novels, he creates a powerful tension, between individual experience and the insignificance of the human being as part of the universe.
'Vanity Fair' is considered to be Thackeray's masterpiece although when it was first published it was thought subversive. Set in the years before and after Waterloo, the novel relates the parallel lives of schoolfriends Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. The two girls are opposite in character, so experience their life fortunes in totally different ways. Amelia is quiet and long suffering, Becky a brilliant hard-hearted schemer. It is Becky who is destined to become the unconventional heroine of the novel with her qualities of practical common sense, a low boredom threshold and disarming qualities of self-knowledge. Amelia, the lady, is attractive to men, but invisible to women. Her failing is to elevate the caddish soldier George Osborne into a hero. This outmoded romanticism relpaces her good judgement, blighting her life. Satire, realism, parody, an historical morality tale, Vanity Fair includes them all; no absolute answers, only questions, an infinite regression through fiction to reality.
Anthony Trollope, Oxford University Press Trollope's Palliser novels are a series of six 'parliamentary tales' written between 1863 and1876. They follow the destiny of Plantagenet Palliser, illustrious politician and heir to the duke of Omnium and his socialite wife, Glencora. Interwoven through each novel are the stories of colleagues of 'Planty Pall' and also the social allies and rivals of Lady Glencora. These contrasting characters range from the naive Irishman Phineas Finn and his four loves to the wily Lizzie Eustace, who comes adrift in manipulating the consequences of the theft of a family heirloom. The Pallisers themselves are frequently absent from the scene for long periods, while the accounts of these lesser players take centre stage. Trollope carefully maintains the balance between the protagonist and his other characters, not diminishing the conflicts and challenges between them. 'The Pallisers' is a saga of romance, jealousy,blackmail and even murder, illuminating the reality of late nineteenth century life.
When Billy, a handsome unpretentious, young able seaman with a stutter, is falsely accused of inciting mutiny, he lashes out, kills his accuser and is condemned to die. Written in most beautiful prose, rich with ideas and many layered meanings, Billy Budd continues to fascinate the reader. The main theme in this complex book can be seen as the vulnerability and attraction of innocence in the face of corruption. Billy, as a Christ figure, is the embodiment of goodness destroyed by evil but his tragic death is somehow mitigated by a greater justice.
Moby Dick is an epic of almost overwhelming extensiveness, knowledge, grandeur and eloquence. Melville weaves a fantastic tale set in the tough world of whale hunting off the North East American coast during the nineteenth century. Each character on board the whaling ship is carefully sketched and allocated a particular role as the action unfolds. Through his creative use of narrative form, Melville opens the door to new perceptions, to a world full of symbols and mytholo gy. The image of the white whale is painstakingly dissected and analysed but Melville leaves its meaning ambiguous and elusive, symbolising perhaps that creativity itself should never be fully grasped or exploited.
A midnight encounter on a lonely road with a mysterious and agitated woman, dressed entirely in white, opens this fascinating novel. The plot deals in madness, misogyny, love, betrayal and a powerful sense of foreboding which captures the reader until the last chapter. In this novel Collins, like his contemporary Dickens is criticizing social conditions of the time, in particular, the state of women's asylums and the legal rights of women. The complexity and richness of this novel is enhanced by Collins' clever device of narrating the story through the contrasting perspectives of his leading characters.
