Literature: History & Criticism

e-books in this category

Thackeray
by Anthony Trollope - Macmillan and Co. , 1879
This book surveys the life and works of the author of Vanity Fair. It is an introductory text about an author who is still popular today, and offers insights into Victorian assumptions about novel writing, providing an account of Thackeray's life.
(214 views)

Horror and Science: Essays on the Horror Genre, Skepticism, and Scientology
by Jason Colavito - jasoncolavito.com , 2011
This book examines some of the odder corners of the intersection of reason and fear, including professional skeptics who condemn horror fiction as dangerous and radical theorists who misused horror ideas to claim aliens visited the ancient earth.
(443 views)

Why We Should Read
by S. P. B. Mais - Grant Richards LTD. , 1921
The book introduces you to authors that you don't yet know: Tom Jones, Charles Lamb, James Boswell, William Hazlitt, Samuel Pepys, Walter Savage Landor, John Donne, George Santayana, Iris Tree, Aldous Huxley, Robert Graves, Sheila Kaye-Smith, etc.
(536 views)

Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown
by Andrew Lang - eBooks@Adelaide , 2011
The theory that Francis Bacon was the author of Shakespeare's plays, has now been for fifty years before the learned world. Its advocates met with less support than they had reason to expect. The Baconian theory is universally rejected in England.
(859 views)

The Bible as English Literature
by John Hays Gardiner - Scribner , 1906
The author's aim has been to make students as familiar as possible with the English Bible, and to throw light on its literary forms by bringing together facts from the history of its sources and from the history of the translation into English.
(1533 views)

Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study
by Arthur Ransome - Project Gutenberg , 2011
He saw art as self-expression and life as self-development. He felt that his life was material on which to practise his powers of creation, and handled it and brooded over it like a sculptor planning to make a dancing figure out of a pellet of clay.
(1706 views)

Outline of American Literature
by Kathryn VanSpanckeren - U.S. Department of State , 2006
The Outline of American literature, newly revised, traces the paths of American narrative, fiction, poetry and drama as they move from pre-colonial times into the present, through such literary movements as romanticism, realism and experimentation.
(3276 views)

USA Literature in Brief
by Kathryn VanSpanckeren - U. S. Department of State , 2007
The book describes the contributions to American literature of some of the best-recognized American poets, novelists, philosophers and dramatists from pre-Colonial days through the present. Major literary figures are discussed in detail.
(1949 views)

Writers on America
by George Clack - America.gov , 2002
This volume presents 15 essays by a diverse group of contemporary American writers, poets, essayists, and intellectuals, on how being an American has affected their decision to write and what they have written during successful careers.
(1665 views)

The Classical Divide: Imagination and Rationality
by Nanette Norris - Lulu.com , 2008
Classical study is the study of Greek and Roman mythology and rhetoric, the study of the intellectual and imaginative sources of Greece and Rome. This study seeks to broaden this understanding of the classical influence.
(1882 views)

Frankenstein's Dream
by Jerrold E. Hogle - University of Maryland , 2003
This collection focuses on the nightmarish sleep into which Victor Frankenstein falls after seeing his creature take its first breaths in Mary Shelley's novel of 1818. These essays deal with several rarely explored aspects of Frankenstein's dream.
(1837 views)

A Novelist on Novels
by Walter Lionel George - W. Collins Sons & Co , 1918
The book expresses the fluctuating feelings aroused in the author by the modern novel and its treatment at the hands of the public. The chapters on 'Falstaff,' 'The Esperanto of Art,' and 'The Twilight of Genius' have been included.
(1876 views)

Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter
- Wikibooks , 2010
This is a guidebook to the Harry Potter series. Critical commentary on each chapter, character, place, and event is provided in an effort to help the reader better understand detailed content and see connections to the greater storyline.
(4256 views)

Letters to Dead Authors
by Andrew Lang - eBooks@Adelaide , 2009
In this epistolary work, Lang has presented spoof letters that he wrote to various deceased authors. While he generously praises them for their genius and manner of expression, he also addresses the shortcomings of some of these authors.
(1781 views)

An Introduction to Shakespeare
by Durham, MacCracken, Pierce - The MacMillan Company , 1925
This volume presents what may be necessary for the majority of classes, as a background on which may be begun the study of the plays. Critical comment on individual plays may stimulate interest in other plays than those assigned for study.
(2760 views)

Homer and His Age
by Andrew Lang - eBooks@Adelaide , 2009
The aim of 'Homer and His Age' is to prove that the Homeric Epics as wholes and apart from passages gravely suspected in antiquity present a perfectly harmonious picture of the entire life and civilization of one single age.
(4173 views)

Getting to be Mark Twain
by Jeffrey Steinbrink - University of California Press , 1991
Mark Twain is one of our most accessible cultural icons, a figure familiar to virtually every American and renowned internationally. But he was not always as we know him today. This is the story of the coming of age of Mark Twain.
(3159 views)

Mysticism in English Literature
by Caroline F. E. Spurgeon - Cambridge University Press , 1913
Author restrict herself to a discussion of that philosophical type of mysticism which concerns itself with questions of ultimate reality. The aim of the book is to consider this subject in connection with great English writers.
(6969 views)

English Literature
by William J. Long - Ginn and Co , 1909
The history of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the close of the Victorian Era. The book should encourage the desire to read the best books, to interpret literature historically, and show the steady development of our literature.
(8424 views)