158. (George Eliot)

Six, and possibly seven, models were available for the realist novel in the nineteenth century. First, the novel of social … More

127. (George Eliot)

This post will open with George Eliot and then drift, possibly to return. For a starting point, consider one of … More

90. (Andrew Marvell)

Yesterday’s post on Andrew Marvell perhaps flew too high in abstraction; the thought that literature might be classified by tolerance … More

77. (R.H. Hutton)

One of the chief differences between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century voices of critical prose is that the former wrote for the … More

74. (Émile Zola)

In the spirit of a reading journal, here’s the first of a two-part attempt to say something coherent about Zola’s … More

37. (Henry James)

His sentences are moved to excess with a wariness of waste. The inheritance of scrupulous, new-world economizing is carried over, … More

33. (Stendhal)

Minor characters blaze into majority; major events are subordinated to asides; the tempo feels all wrong, the climax abrupt, the … More

18. (Laurence Sterne)

Judge the bar to be set where you will, what follows is going to be worse than what I usually … More

16. (Arthur Symons)

The George Eliot in me (there’s one in all of us) would turn over as a subject for a novel … More

5. (D.H. Lawrence)

V.S. Pritchett, introducing his edition of the Oxford Book of Short Stories, admits that he admires D.H. Lawrence most as a … More