First published anonymously in 1872, "Under the Greenwood Tree" is Thomas Hardy's story of the romantic entanglement between church musician, Dick Dewey, and the attractive new school mistress, Fancy Day. A pleasant romantic tale set in the Victorian era, "Under the Greenwood Tree" is the first of Hardy's "Wessex" novels and is one of his most gentle and pastoral stories. Dick falls in love with the beautiful and talented Fancy the moment he meets...

The Last Chronicle of Barset is a novel by Anthony Trollope, published in 1867. It is the final book of a series of six, often referred to collectively as the Chronicles of Barsetshire. The Last Chronicle of Barset concerns an indigent but learned clergyman, the Reverend Josiah Crawley, the perpetual curate of Hogglestock, who stands accused of stealing a cheque. The novel is notable for the non-resolution of a plot continued from the previous novel...

Drawing directly on her own experiences, Anne Brontë describes the isolation and dark ambiguity of the governess's life as lived by her fictional heroine Agnes Grey. Mature, insightful, and edged with a quiet irony, this first novel by the youngest of the Brontës displays her keen sense of moral responsibility and sharp eye for bourgeois attitudes and behavior.

Winesburg, Ohio is a 1919 short story cycle by the American author Sherwood Anderson. The work is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard, from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man. It is set in the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio (not to be confused with the actual Winesburg), which is based loosely on the author's childhood memories of Clyde, Ohio. Mostly written...

"Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832?1888), which was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Alcott wrote the books rapidly over several months at the request of her publisher. The novel follows the lives of four sisters?Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March?detailing their passage from childhood to womanhood, and is loosely based on the author and her three sisters. Little Women was an immediate commercial and...

"The classic story of a passionate woman's struggle against fate in her search for love. Bathsheba Everdene has inherited a prosperous farm in Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex. Driven by pride and vanity, strong-minded and fiercely independent, she is nevertheless subject to her own whims and, perhaps, an unavoidable fate. Bathsheba's passionate nature draws the attention of three suitors: wealthy farmer William Boldwood, dashing and seductive Sergeant...

First published serially between January and December of 1878 in the sensationalistic monthly London magazine "Belgravia", Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native" is the author's sixth published novel. Set in Egdon Heath, an area of Thomas Hardy's fictionalized Wessex known for the thorny evergreen shrubs, called furze or gorse, which are cut there by its residents for fuel. When the story begins, on Guy Fawkes Night, we find Diggory Venn, a merchant...

It took Charles Darwin more than twenty years to publish this book, in part because he realized that it would ignite a firestorm of controversy. The Origin of Species first appeared in 1859, and it remains a continuing source of conflict to this day. Even among those who reject its ideas, however, the work's impact is undeniable. In science, philosophy, and theology, this is a book that changed the world. In addition to its status as the focus of...

The narrator interrupts reminiscences about his childhood spent in late-nineteenth-century France to recall the affair which a friend of the family carried on with young Odette de Crecy.