The Importance of Being Earnest, a Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage and the resulting satire of Victorian conformity. Some contemporary reviews praised the play's humour as the culmination of Wilde's artistic career, while others were cautious about its lack of social messages. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make The Importance of Being Earnest a very popular play.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. The novel-length version was published in April 1891.
In Search of Lost Time, first translated into English as Remembrance of Things Past, and sometimes referred to in French as La Recherche, is a novel in seven volumes by French author Marcel Proust. This early 20th-century work is his most prominent, known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory. The most famous example of this is the "episode of the madeleine", which occurs early in the first volume.
Daniel Deronda is a novel written by English author George Eliot, first published in eight parts (books) February to September 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the Victorian society of her day. The work's mixture of social satire and moral searching, along with its sympathetic rendering of Jewish proto-Zionist ideas, has made it the controversial final statement of one of the most renowned Victorian novelists.
Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between 12 March 1852 and 12 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.
Fanshawe is a novel written by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was his first published work, which he published anonymously in 1828.
Rebecca is a 1938 Gothic novel written by English author Daphne du Maurier. The novel depicts an unnamed young woman who impetuously marries a wealthy widower, before discovering that both he and his household are haunted by the memory of his late first wife, the title character.
The Zahir is a 2005 novel by the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. As in an earlier book, The Alchemist, The Zahir is about a pilgrimage. The book touches on themes of love, loss and obsession.
The Europeans: A sketch is a short novel by Henry James, published in 1878. It is essentially a comedy contrasting the behaviour and attitudes of two visitors from Europe with those of their relatives living in the "new" world of New England. The novel first appeared as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly for July–October 1878. James made numerous minor revisions for the first book publication.
The Historian is the 2005 debut novel of American author Elizabeth Kostova. The plot blends the history and folklore of Vlad Țepeș and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula. Kostova's father told her stories about Dracula when she was a child, and later in life she was inspired to turn the experience into a novel. She worked on the book for ten years and then sold it within a few months to Little, Brown and Company, which bought it for US$2 million.
The Mysteries of Udolpho is a Gothic romance novel by Ann Radcliffe, which appeared in four volumes on 8 May 1794 from G. G. and J. Robinson of London. Her fourth and most popular novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho tells of Emily St. Aubert, who suffers misadventures that include the death of her mother and father, supernatural terrors in a gloomy castle, and machinations of Italian brigand Signor Montoni. It is often cited as an archetypal example of the Gothic novel.
The American is a novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1876–77 and then as a book in 1877.
The Sacred Fount is a novel by Henry James, first published in 1901. The book follows an unnamed narrator at a weekend party in the English countryside as he attempts to discover the truth about the love lives of his fellow guests. The Sacred Fount is the only one of James's novels written in first person. Since its publication it has received mixed responses from critics, and it was not included in James's New York Edition, the edition of his work he considered definitive.
The Flower of My Secret is a 1995 drama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. It was selected as the Spanish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 68th Academy Awards, but it was not selected as one of the final five nominees.
"The Next Time" is an 1895 short story by Henry James.
Gwendolen is a feminine given name, in general use only since the 19th century.
Dreams of My Russian Summers is a French novel by Andrei Makine, originally published in 1995. It won two top French awards, the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Médicis. The novel is told from the first-person perspective and tells the fictional story of a boy's memories and experiences with his French grandmother in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and '70s.
"Glasses" is an 1896 short story by Henry James. A young woman whose only asset is a supremely beautiful face is about to make a society marriage. That is, until her fiancé discovers that, being virtually blind, she needs thick glasses which ruin her looks.
The Way It Came is a short story published in 1896 in London by American writer Henry James. The unnamed female narrator recounts her obsession with the mystical coincidence of two friends who seem destined to meet and who apparently do unite in spirit after death.
Purity is a novel by American author Jonathan Franzen. His fifth novel, it was published on 1 September 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The Figure in the Carpet is an important part of the plot of Eureka, a novel by Anthony Quinn.
