Well, here it is - maybe the most famous dirty book in the history of the English language. And it's dirty, all right, but what it mostly...

My question is, how is one to encounter an early novel like "Tom Jones"? When Fielding wrote it, there wasn't much in the way of...

If I'm not mistaken, Tobias George Smollett is not one of the best-known authors of his age, which is a shame, because man was he good....

When reviewing a book from a previous age, like this one, I generally try to judge it according to the standards of the time in which it...

Here's a huge bestseller from the 1740s in England – so much so that it gave rise to an early parody. Henry Fielding published "Shamela"...

John Arbuthnot, John Gay, Thomas Parnell, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift. Wow. Why so many authors? There was a society in Britain...

Henry Fielding was the author of one of the most popular novels of early English literature, "Tom Jones". Before that, however, came...

At roughly 20 pages, this may be the shortest item on "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" – we'll see. If we measure by the amount...

Among the most famous images that literature has given rise to – along with the skinny knight charging at windmills on horseback and the...

Here's the last novel by Daniel Defoe, author of one of the best-loved novels in English literature – "Robinson Crusoe", of course....

It's not all that common, even today, for male authors to write stories with female main characters (and vice versa – apologies to J.K....

I was one of those rotten kids who taught himself to read at the age of three, fifty-(ahem) years ago, and I studied literature in...

Everybody knows who Robinson Crusoe is, even (or especially) those who haven't read the book. Not only has it remained in print for 300...

Jonathan Swift led a disappointed life in many ways, and with all due respect, after reading "A Tale Of A Tub" and learning something...

Here's one of the first novels by Aphra Behn, one of the first women in England to make her living by writing, a pretty rare thing even...

Here's one of the most famous first lines in literature: "As I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place...

First of all, I have to admit I can't really tell why this work has the title "Thomas Of Reading". Thomas is a character here, to be...

Toward the beginning of this short work, the narrator, Jack Wilton, an upper-class soldier in the army of England's Henry VIII fighting...