If memory serves, Jane Austen has been a highly esteemed author for most of my life, mostly because of “Pride And Prejudice”. The first...

For a story so crowded with incident, “Castle Rackrent” is surprisingly short. This works largely because the first-person narrator,...

It's taken me far longer to read “Camilla, A Picture Of Youth” than almost any other book of equivalent length. While I was slogging...

This is one of those novels that I hesitate to comment on, simply because I'm not a Christian, let alone a Catholic, and as you can tell...

Here we see one possible disadvantage of reading the books listed in “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” in their order on the list...

Here's one of the earliest of the so-called “slavery narratives,” works from those who lived through slavery times. Thus, they are...

Reading very long books normally doesn't cause me any problems. “The Adventures Of Caleb Williams” isn't exceptionally long – the edition...

This is a story by an Englishman, written originally in French, about a caliph in and around what is currently parts of Arabia, Persia,...

Here's a novel about a young English woman (Cecilia, of course) whose parents and uncle have all died, leaving her a considerable fortune...

Fanny Burney is only the sixth woman, out of 56 books so far, whose work appears on the “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list,...

The most obvious difference between “The Expedition Of Humphry Clinker” and Tobias George Smollett's other work is undoubtedly that, in...

When it comes to the older literature on the “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list, I've at least heard of most of the titles....

I find “A Sentimental Journey Through France And Italy” a trifle confusing. This may be due to the fact that Laurence Sterne never...

At the end of Volume 6 of this work, Mr. Shandy as the teller of his own life story provides a drawing of his narrative line over the...

Some years ago, Robert Duvall starred in a movie called "The Apostle" about a famous television preacher who loses everything largely...

Written some years before the American Revolution by a Member of Parliament, it should come as no surprise that Horace Walpole's work...

Wikipedia shows a good many works by Samuel Johnson just prior to the American Revolution = plays, poems, essays on a multitude of...

The older I get, the less patience I have with fools. A great many people besides me get impatient with fools, of course. The surprise to...

Novels from this period, including Fielding's, frequently share a number of characteristics – length, episodic structure, plots that deal...

I confess that I'm not sure what I can say about “The Adventures Of Peregrine Pickle” that will distinguish it from other English novels...