Literary Criticism
Within a Budding Grove
In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (French: À la recherche du temps perdu) is a semi-autobiographical novel in seve…
The Idiot
The extraordinary child-adult Prince Myshkin, confined for several years in a Swiss sanatorium suffering from severe epilepsy, returns to Ru…
Feminism in Greek Literature
This study, published in 1923, examines the views regarding women's place in Ancient Greek society based especially on the writings of Homer…
Greek Literature
"The Greeks were the most intellectual people of the old world. … The study of Greek literature is therefore a proper element in a libe…
The Birthplace
Neither the name of Shakespeare nor that of Stratford appears directly in this short piece by James, and yet both are absolutely central to …
The Figure in the Carpet
The story ostensibly concerns a young literary critics who greatly admires the writer Hugh Vereker. A meeting with Vereker, however, shows h…
Just Sweethearts
“Clearly he was one of those rare beings who can radiate energy standing still and convey the impression of impetuous force without motion, …
Robert Browning
There is an old anecdote, probably apocryphal, which describes how a feminine admirer wrote to Browning asking him for the meaning of one of…
Madame Bovary
Published in book form in April 1857, the novel focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her mea…
The Dark
The Dark is a novella about a desperate young man, a “terrorist and nihilist”, trying to avoid arrest by taking refuge in a brothel. The sto…
Companionable Books
Many books are dry and dusty, there is no juice in them; and many are soon exhausted, you would no more go back to them than to a squeezed o…
Sanctuary
Kate Orme, shocked by the discovery of her fiance's complicity in a tragedy, and by society's willingness to overlook such transgressions, n…
The Good Soldier
The Good Soldier (1915) "... is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two seemingly perfect couples.…
Where Angels Fear to Tread
On a journey to Tuscany with her young friend and traveling companion Caroline Abbott, widowed Lilia Herriton falls in love with both Italy …
The Lesson of the Master
A promising young writer meets an older man whose works have inspired him, as well as a highly intelligent and attractive young woman, at a …
Pierre & Jean
This short novel’s titular characters are brothers. An old family friend dies, leaving without explanation his entire fortune to Jean, the y…
A Far Country
The book follows the career of Hugh Paret from youth to manhood, and how his profession as a corporation lawyer gradually changes his values…
The Awakening
Owing to its highly personal content focused on feminine sexuality, this LibriVox edition was recorded by eight female readers. The Modern L…
Crome Yellow
Fascinating and brilliant at many levels, Huxley's spoof of Lady Ottoline Morrell's famous bohemian gatherings is difficult to categorize. T…
The House of Mirth
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton explores the intricate social dynamics of New York's high society in the early 20th century through the …