Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage for the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works are an implicit critique of the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her deft use of social commentary, realism and biting irony have earned her acclaim among critics and scholars.
If on a winter's night a traveler is a 1979 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The postmodernist narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called If on a winter's night a traveler. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book they are reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader ("you") finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones. The book was published in an English translation by William Weaver in 1981.
The picaresque novel is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish but "appealing hero", usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt the form of "an episodic prose narrative" with a realistic style. There are often some elements of comedy and satire. While the term "picaresque novel" was only coined in 1810, the picaresque novel originated in Imperial Rome during the 1st-2nd century CE, in particular with works such as the Satyricon of Petronius and later, and more particularly with authors such as Apuleius in Roman Numidia. It would see a revival in Spain during the Spanish Golden Age in 1554. Early Spanish contributors included Mateo Alemán and Francisco de Quevedo, who were influenced in particular by Apuleius' 2nd century work. Other notable ancient influences of the modern picaresque genre include Roman playwrights such as Plautus and Terence. The Golden Ass of Apuleius nevertheless remains, according to many scholars such as F. W. Chandler, A. Marasso, T. Somerville and T. Bodenmüller, the primary influence for the modern Picaresque genre. Subsequently, after the revival in Spain, the genre flourished throughout Europe for more than 200 years for the first time since the Roman period. It continues to influence modern literature.
Wolfram von Eschenbach was a German knight, poet and composer, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of medieval German literature. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, also known as Tristram Shandy, is a novel by Laurence Sterne, inspired by Don Quixote. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next seven years. It purports to be a biography of the eponymous character. Its style is marked by digression, double entendre, and graphic devices. The first edition was printed by Ann Ward on Coney Street, York.
The Sun Also Rises is the first novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway. It portrays American and British expatriates who travel along the Camino de Santiago from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona and watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work" and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by Scribner's. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print.
Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This style of experimental literature emerged strongly in the United States in the 1960s through the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker, and John Barth. Postmodernists often challenge authorities, which has been seen as a symptom of the fact that this style of literature first emerged in the context of political tendencies in the 1960s. This inspiration is, among other things, seen through how postmodern literature is highly self-reflexive about the political issues it speaks to.
The Beautifull Cassandra [sic] is a short novel from Jane Austen's juvenilia. It is a parody of the melodramatic, sentimental and picaresque novels of the time, and tells the story of a young woman who sets off into the world to make her fortune.
John Whitney Stillman is an American writer-director and actor known for his 1990 film Metropolitan, which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He is also known for his other films, Barcelona (1994), The Last Days of Disco (1998), Damsels in Distress (2011), as well as his most recent film, Love & Friendship, released in 2016.
Mary Louise Poovey is an American cultural historian and literary critic whose work focuses on the Victorian Era. She is currently Samuel Rudin University Professor in the Humanities at New York University, and Director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge. Poovey has taught at Johns Hopkins University, Swarthmore College, and Yale University.
The sensation novel, also sensation fiction, was a literary genre of fiction that achieved peak popularity in Great Britain in the 1860s and 1870s. Its literary forebears included the melodramatic novels and the Newgate novels, which focused on tales woven around criminal biographies; it also drew on the Gothic, romance, as well as mass market genres. The genre's popularity was conjoined to an expanding book market and growth of a reading public, by-products of the Industrial Revolution. Whereas romance and realism had traditionally been contradictory modes of literature, they were brought together in sensation fiction. The sensation novelists commonly wrote stories that were allegorical and abstract; the abstract nature of the stories gave the authors room to explore scenarios that wrestled with the social anxieties of the Victorian era. The loss of identity is seen in many sensation fiction stories because this was a common social anxiety; in Britain, there was an increased use in record keeping and therefore people questioned the meaning and permanence of identity. The social anxiety regarding identity is reflected in novels such as The Woman in White and Lady Audley's Secret.
Literary tourism is a type of cultural tourism that deals with places and events from literary texts as well as the lives of their authors. This could include visiting particular place associated with a novel or a novelist, such as a writer's home, or grave site, following routes taken by a fictional characters, visiting places mentioned in poems, as well as visiting museums dedicated to specific writers, works, regional literatures, and literary genres.
The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (ISBN 0-915368-56-0) is a 1993 book containing the complete collected short fiction of American science fiction author Cordwainer Smith. It was edited by James A. Mann and published by NESFA Press.
A vignette is a French loanword expressing a short and descriptive piece of writing that captures a brief period in time. Vignettes are more focused on vivid imagery and meaning rather than plot. Vignettes can be stand-alone, but they are more commonly part of a larger narrative, such as vignettes found in novels or collections of short stories.
The Watsons is an abandoned novel by Jane Austen, probably begun about 1803. There have been a number of arguments advanced as to why she did not complete it, and other authors have since attempted the task. A continuation by Austen's niece was published in 1850. The manuscript fragment itself was published in 1871. Further completions and adaptations of the story have continued to the present day.
The Art of Fiction is a book of literary criticism by the British academic and novelist David Lodge. The chapters of the book first appeared in 1991-1992 as weekly columns in The Independent on Sunday and were eventually gathered into book form and published in 1992. The essays as they appear in the book have in many cases been expanded from their original format.
The Pale King is an unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace, published posthumously on April 15, 2011. It was planned as Wallace's third novel, and the first since Infinite Jest in 1996, but it was not completed at the time of his death. Before his suicide in 2008, Wallace organized the manuscript and associated computer files in a place where they would be found by his widow, Karen Green, and his agent, Bonnie Nadell. That material was compiled by his friend and editor Michael Pietsch into the form that was eventually published. Wallace had been working on the novel for over a decade. Even incomplete, The Pale King is a long work, with 50 chapters of varying length totaling over 500 pages.
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Scholars regard the publishing of William Wordsworth's and Samuel Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads in 1798 as probably the beginning of the movement in England, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end. Romanticism arrived in other parts of the English-speaking world later; in the United States, it arrived around 1820.
In literature, pace or pacing is the speed at which a story is told—not necessarily the speed at which the story takes place. It is an essential element of storytelling that plays a significant role in maintaining reader interest, building tension, and conveying the desired emotional impact. The number of words needed to write about a certain event does not depend upon how much time the event takes to happen; it depends upon how important that moment is to the story. The pace is determined by the length of the scenes, how fast the action moves, and how quickly the reader is provided with information. A well-paced story effectively balances moments of high intensity and slower-paced sections to create a dynamic reading experience. It is also sometimes dictated by the genre of the story: comedies move faster than dramas; action adventures move faster than suspense. A dragging pace is characteristic of many novels turned down by publishers, and of some that find their way into print but not into the hearts and recommendations of readers. Manuscripts that move too slowly usually discourage readers from reading on. Through various editing techniques, such as cutting unnecessary details, rearranging scenes, or suggesting additions, editors assist in maintaining an engaging pace that keeps readers captivated. Yanna Popova and Elena Cuffari elaborate that as editors they, "explore the participatory structure of a narrative through its temporal unfolding and the specific, non-linear nature of the temporal dynamics of interacting with a storytelling agency". Popova and Cuffari make clear that the way an author unfolds a story through structuring that narrative's tale is essential to the way the audience will interpret it.
