Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in which the sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique of European colonial rule in Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. Although Conrad does not name the river on which most of the narrative takes place, at the time of writing the Congo Free State, the location of the large and economically important Congo River, was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is given a text by Kurtz, an ivory trader working on a trading station far up the river, who has "gone native" and is the object of Marlow's expedition.
Vanity Fair is a novel by the English author William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. It was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial from 1847 to 1848, carrying the subtitle Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society, which reflects both its satirisation of early 19th-century British society and the many illustrations drawn by Thackeray to accompany the text. It was published as a single volume in 1848 with the subtitle A Novel without a Hero, reflecting Thackeray's interest in deconstructing his era's conventions regarding literary heroism. It is sometimes considered the "principal founder" of the Victorian domestic novel.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a detective novel by the British writer Agatha Christie, her third to feature Hercule Poirot as the lead detective. The novel was published in the UK in June 1926 by William Collins, Sons, having previously been serialised as Who Killed Ackroyd? between July and September 1925 in the London Evening News. An American edition by Dodd, Mead and Company followed in 1926.
The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story (1901) is a quasi-science fiction novel on which Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford collaborated. Written before the first World War, its themes of corruption and the effect of the 20th century on British aristocracy were prescient. It was first published in London by William Heinemann and later the same year in New York by McClure, Phillips and Company.
Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several subplots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens said there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably Thellusson v Woodford, in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, Bleak House helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.
Matilda is a children's novel written by British writer Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. It was published in 1988 by Jonathan Cape. The story features Matilda Wormwood, a precocious child with an uncaring mother and father, and her time in school run by the tyrannical headmistress Miss Trunchbull.
Lord Jim is a novel by Joseph Conrad originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900. An early and primary event in the story is the abandonment of a passenger ship in distress by its crew, including a young British seaman named Jim. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with himself and his past and seeking redemption and acceptance.
The Shadow-Line is a short novel based at sea by Joseph Conrad; it is one of his later works, being written from February to December 1915. It was first published in 1916 as a serial in New York's Metropolitan Magazine (September—October) in the English Review and published in book form in 1917 in the UK (March) and America (April). The novella depicts the development of a young man upon taking a captaincy in the Orient, with the shadow line of the title representing the threshold of this development.
Under Western Eyes (1911) is a novel by Joseph Conrad. The novel takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva, Switzerland, and is viewed as Conrad's response to the themes explored in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment; Conrad was reputed to have detested Dostoevsky. It has also been interpreted as Conrad's response to his own early life; his father was a Polish independence activist and would-be revolutionary imprisoned by the Russians, but, instead of following in his father's footsteps, at the age of sixteen Conrad left his native land, only to return briefly decades later. Indeed, while writing Under Western Eyes, Conrad suffered a weeks-long breakdown during which he conversed with the novel's characters in Polish.
Sargasso Sea Stories are a group of short stories written by English author William Hope Hodgson that are set around the Sargasso Sea. They have been featured in various short story collections, including The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" and Other Nautical Adventures: The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson, Volume 1. In his introduction to this volume, the editor Jeremy Lassen writes:
[These stories] are the kind of stories that helped Hodgson achieve commercial success. These stories were often published in the highest paying fiction markets of his day, and demonstrate his wide-ranging narrative talent... Today's readers of Hodgson may be more familiar with his stunningly original novels of cosmic vision, such as The House on the Borderland or The Night Land, but it is his narratives of the sea that first captured the attention of the reading public. Most importantly, however, it was in the weed-choked Sargasso Sea where Hodgson first began to explore unreality, and the borderlands of human existence.
Victory is a psychological novel by Joseph Conrad first published in 1915, through which Conrad achieved "popular success."
Robbery Under Arms is a bushranger novel by Thomas Alexander Browne, published under his pen name Rolf Boldrewood. It was first published in serialised form by The Sydney Mail between July 1882 and August 1883, then in three volumes in London in 1888. It was abridged into a single volume in 1889 as part of Macmillan's one-volume Colonial Library series and has not been out of print since.
“Youth” is an autobiographical work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad first published in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1898, and collected in the eponymous collection Youth, A Narrative; and Two Other Stories in 1902.
In literature, a serial is a printing or publishing format by which a single larger work, often a work of narrative fiction, is published in smaller, sequential instalments. The instalments are also known as numbers, parts, fascicules or fascicles, and may be released either as separate publications or within sequential issues of a periodical publication, such as a magazine or newspaper.
The House of Breath is a novel written by the American author William Goyen. It was his first book, published in 1950. It is not a novel in the usual sense in that it lacks traditional plot and character development. Upon its publication, reviewers noted the book for its unusual literary technique and style. Goyen called it a series of “arias”. Some critics have called it not a novel at all but a work to be read as poetry, over and over. The book touches on themes of family (kinship), human sexuality, place, time, and memory. It received critical acclaim upon its publication, not commercial success, but it did lead the way for support of the author’s further work through fellowships.
The Arrow of Gold is a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1919. It was originally titled "The Laugh" and published serially in Lloyd's Magazine from December 1918 to February 1920. The story is set in Marseille in the 1870s during the Third Carlist War. The characters of the novel are supporters of the Spanish Pretender Carlos, Duke of Madrid. The novel features a person referred to as "Lord X", whose activities as arms smuggler resemble those of the Carlist politician Tirso de Olazábal y Lardizábal, Count of Arbelaiz.
The Narrative of John Smith (2011) is a novel written in 1883 by Arthur Conan Doyle, published posthumously by The British Library. In a work of narrative fiction, Doyle writes from the perspective of a middle-aged bachelor named John Smith recovering from rheumatic gout. Unlike his later work in detective fiction, fantasy, and science fiction, this novel unfolds through a series of tangential, essay-like thoughts stemming from observations on everyday life. The subjects are of a “personal-social-political complexion”.
Ten Nights in a Bar-room and What I Saw There is an 1854 novel written by American author Timothy Shay Arthur. The book is a temperance novel, written expressly to discourage readers from drinking alcohol. It was a commercial and popular success upon its release and was later adapted into other media.
Nautical fiction, frequently also naval fiction, sea fiction, naval adventure fiction or maritime fiction, is a genre of literature with a setting on or near the sea, that focuses on the human relationship to the sea and sea voyages and highlights nautical culture in these environments. The settings of nautical fiction vary greatly, including merchant ships, liners, naval ships, fishing vessels, life boats, etc., along with sea ports and fishing villages. When describing nautical fiction, scholars most frequently refer to novels, novellas, and short stories, sometimes under the name of sea novels or sea stories. These works are sometimes adapted for the theatre, film and television.
"Falk: A Reminiscence" is a work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad. The story was completed in May 1901 and was collected in Typhoon and Other Stories in 1903, published by William Heinemann and Company.
