Free eBooks - Literary Criticism
Total eBooks in selected subject: 180 on 18 pages.
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PREFACE.
THE primary object of this book is to furnish our children with material for becoming acquainted with the development of American life and history as found in Southern writers and their works. It may serve as a reader supplementary to American history and literature, or it may be made the ground-work for serious study of Southern life and letters; and between these extremes there are varying degrees ... more...
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Twain, Mark
Twain, Mark
American author and humorist. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is extensively quoted. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty. Twain enjoyed immense public popularity. His keen wit and incisive satire earned him praise from both critics and peers. American author William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature".
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It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.
Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the restricted ... more...
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Howells, William Dean
Howells, William Dean
American realist author and literary critic.
He wrote his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, in 1872, but his literary reputation took off with the realist novel A Modern Instance, published in 1882, which described the decay of a marriage. His 1885 novel The Rise of Silas Lapham is perhaps his best known, describing the rise and fall of an American entrepreneur in the paint business. His social views were also strongly reflected in the novels Annie Kilburn [1888] and A Hazard of New Fortunes [1890].
Howells also wrote plays, criticism, and essays about contemporary literary figures such as Henrik Ibsen, Emile Zola, Giovanni Verga, Benito Perez Galdos, and ...
He wrote his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, in 1872, but his literary reputation took off with the realist novel A Modern Instance, published in 1882, which described the decay of a marriage. His 1885 novel The Rise of Silas Lapham is perhaps his best known, describing the rise and fall of an American entrepreneur in the paint business. His social views were also strongly reflected in the novels Annie Kilburn [1888] and A Hazard of New Fortunes [1890].
Howells also wrote plays, criticism, and essays about contemporary literary figures such as Henrik Ibsen, Emile Zola, Giovanni Verga, Benito Perez Galdos, and ...
I think that every man ought to work for his living, without exception, and that when he has once avouched his willingness to work, society should provide him with work and warrant him a living. I do not think any man ought to live by an art. A man's art should be his privilege, when he has proven his fitness to exercise it, and has otherwise earned his daily bread; and its results should be free to all. There ... more...
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CHAPTER I. THE PIONEERS
The United States of America has been from the beginning in a perpetual change. The physical and mental restlessness of the American and the temporary nature of many of his arrangements are largely due to the experimental character of the exploration and development of this continent. The new energies released by the settlement of the colonies were indeed guided by stern determination, ... more...
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IRace, Nation, and Book
Many years ago, as a student in a foreign university, I remember attacking, with the complacency of youth, a German history of the English drama, in six volumes. I lost courage long before the author reached the age of Elizabeth, but I still recall the subject of the opening chapter: it was devoted to the physical geography of Great Britain. Writing, as the good German professor did, ... more...
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Chapter IWriters of New Amsterdam
THERE is a fashion nowadays of trimming the fronts of brick houses by placing black bricks among the red in such a way as to form odd and unique designs. It is an attractive way of doing, for it varies the staid simplicity of the solid color. But for all it may seem original and new, it is a style that had its beginning long, long ago, even in the days when the stern ... more...
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"THE POET OF THE NIGHT"
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"I am a Virginian; at least, I call myself one, for I have resided all my life until within the last few years in Richmond."
Thus Edgar A. Poe wrote to a friend. The fact of his birth in Boston he regarded as merely an unfortunate accident, or perhaps the work of that malevolent "Imp of the Perverse" which apparently dominated his life. That it constituted any tie ... more...
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CHAPTER I.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
1607-1765.
The writings of our colonial era have a much greater importance as history than as literature. It would be unfair to judge of the intellectual vigor of the English colonists in America by the books that they wrote; those "stern men with empires in their brains" had more pressing work to do than the making of books. The first settlers, indeed, were brought face to ... more...
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INTRODUCTION
We have a Book lately publish'd here which hath of late taken up the whole conversation of the town. Tis said to be writ by Swift. It is called, The travells of Lemuell Gulliver in two Volumes. It hath had a very great sale. People differ vastly in their opinions of it, for some think it hath a great deal of wit, but others say, it hath none at all.
John Gay to James Dormer (22 November 1726) ... more...
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Lang, Andrew
Lang, Andrew
Andrew Lang (March 31 1844 - July 20 1912) was a prolific Scots poet, novelist, and literary critic but is best known as the collector of folk and fairy tales.
His first publication was a volume of metrical experiments, The Ballads and Lyrics of Old France [1872], and this was followed at intervals by other volumes of dainty verse, Ballades in Blue China (1880, enlarged edition, 1888), Ballads and Verses Vain [1884], Rhymes a la Mode [1884], Grass of Parnassus [1888], Ban and Arriere Ban [1894], New Collected Rhymes [1905].
He collaborated with S.H. Butcher in a prose translation [1879] of the Odyssey, and with E Myers and Walter Leaf in a prose version ...
His first publication was a volume of metrical experiments, The Ballads and Lyrics of Old France [1872], and this was followed at intervals by other volumes of dainty verse, Ballades in Blue China (1880, enlarged edition, 1888), Ballads and Verses Vain [1884], Rhymes a la Mode [1884], Grass of Parnassus [1888], Ban and Arriere Ban [1894], New Collected Rhymes [1905].
He collaborated with S.H. Butcher in a prose translation [1879] of the Odyssey, and with E Myers and Walter Leaf in a prose version ...
ESSAYS INTRODUCTORY
THE SO-CALLED HOMERIC HYMNS
“The existing collection of the Hymns is of unknown editorship, unknown date, and unknown purpose,” says Baumeister. Why any man should have collected the little preludes of five or six lines in length, and of purely conventional character, while he did not copy out the longer poems to which they probably served as preludes, is a ... more...
