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Free Online Study Guides for the Classics
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Bartleby - Great Books Online
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Bibliomania
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| More than 2,000 classic texts |
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Classic Literature Online
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Guide To Poetry
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Online Classic Books Listed by Author
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Project Gutenberg
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2001: A Space Odyssey - Study Guide
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Study Guide
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Adventures to Huckleberry Finn
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| Teachers Guide and Lesson Plan
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Alice's Adventure in Wonderland
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| Lewis Carroll is best remembered for this story, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, both of which are children's books with content and style that have often appealed as much to adult readers as to the young. It was published in 1865 and was in fact with a particular child in mind, Alice Liddell, and had the working title "Alice's Adventures Under Ground". As befits that title, the tale is indeed of a trip (with the additional psychedelic sense certainly intact for the modern reader) beneath normal existence. Alice follows a certain White Rabbit down from the riverside in a dream. This alternate reality follows its own internal logic and is therefore not merely an excuse for fantasy. This logic is played out by now well-known characters such as the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, the Cheshire Cat and the March Hare whose tea parties and games have taken their place in the folklore of the real world through generations of readers. The story has no moral dimension to speak of and is therefore unusual for nineteenth century children's literature, but it does extol caution and other common sense values in the often foolish choices made by Alice that take her deeper into the strange dimension. Its popularity among adults has led to it being translated into Latin. |
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Animal Farm - Study Guide
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Anna Karenina
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| Anna Karenina is widely regarded to be an even greater achievement of tragedy and of the novel form than War and Peace had been the decade before. Tolstoy began it in 1873 and concluded it in 1877. It is the story of a fashionable married woman, Anna Karenina, who arrives in St Petersberg to meet Stepan Arkadyevitch but meets with him another man. This man, Count Vronsky, is strangely attracted to Anna from the outset and she begins to feel for him too. Anna recalls her cold-blooded and cynical husband who is twenty years her senior. He never shows her any affection and considers her to be a trophy. The Count contrives to meet Anna again through his friendship with Stepan, with whom Anna is residing. The novel then follows this liaison as it begin and then ends horribly as Anna’s husband Karenin finds out about the affair. Anna is brought down by others’ passions and power over her and she is driven, after many twists and turns in her fortunes and those of her lovers, to throw herself under the wheels of a train. It is one of the most famous suicides in literary history but to know of its inevitability only makes the tragedy of Anna’s life more cathartic and sad.
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Antony and Cleopatra - Study Guide
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As You Like It - Study Guide
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Billy Budd
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| Billy Budd is a novella by Melville, who is most famous for his novel Moby Dick that was written some forty years earlier. Foretopman Billy Budd, to give the book its full title, was written in 1891 but was not published until 1924. It is the story of ‘the handsome sailor’ Billy who, though a decent man, is treated badly by his master-at-arms called Claggart and strikes this nasty character down, killing him outright but unintentionally. The cause of this sorry circumstance is Billy’s stammer that prevents him from defending himself in words when he is wrongfully accused by Claggart. The tale follows his trial under Captain Vere and his subsequent hanging. After his death we are told of his apparent Christ-like return in "glory as... the Lamb of God", and his fellow sailors begin to question whether the man has died at all. The opera of the story by Britten (1951) is extremely popular and one of the most important modern works in the classical repertoire. Melville’s purpose in writing the story originates in the part his older brother played in presiding over the court martial of a sailor involved in insubordination whose punishment was execution.
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Black Beauty
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| Black Beauty was the only book written by Anna Sewell, although its continued popularity among children, particularly girls, has justified that effort. Sewell was, remarkably, paid only twenty pounds for the book and it was published three months before her death, in 1877. However, its immediate success gave her great pleasure and she died in the knowledge that the book had indeed encouraged people to treat animals less cruelly. It is the autobiography of a horse, the ‘Black Beauty’ of the title, who narrates it. Through various owners who ask different tasks of Black Beauty, he grows and has numerous adventures. He goes from being a riding and carriage horse through being a mistreated town cab horse to eventual happiness in a secure home. Notably, the animal keeps strength and good temper throughout his suffering and the story was extremely influential as pro-animal propaganda but it is also an extremely exciting and moving children’s story.
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Bleak House
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| Bleak House is one of Dicken’s longest and most complex novels. It contains many different and divergent storylines that intertwine as characters meet by chance or fate. In that sense it is impossible to summarise, though key themes run through it: the foremost of these being the absurdity of legal proceedings that seem to have no purpose but to line the pockets of lawyers. The case of ‘Jardyce and Jarndyce’ is the key example here. The wards of court in the case are the children Richard Carstone and Ada Clare who live with their relative, the philanthropic John Jarndyce. Initially the novel concerns their love for each other. The novel’s heroine is Esther Summerson, an orphan, who also goes to live with Jarndyce, and narrates much of the novel. Other strands of the book concern Sir Leicester Dedlock and his beautiful wife who hides a shocking secret about an illegitimate child and a long lost love. The machinations of her search for the latter bring her to the penniless and illiterate Jo and a grave where she will later die in terrible circumstances brought about by the pursuit of her old lover. The mystery of the death of old lawyer Tulkinghorn brings us another strand with the detective Bucket intervening in one of the novel’s many highlights. Esther and John Jarndyce’s relationship is at the heart of the later stages of the book, and his finally act of generosity in giving her up to the young doctor Woodcourt who she loves. In between there are numerous interesting or plain hilarious minor characters such as the ridiculous Mrs Jellyby whose endless philanthropy have left her utterly unconcerned about her family and Harold Skimpole who is a lazy and selfish man looked after by others’ generosity and his mimicry of childish irresponsibility. In its time the novel was seen as poorly constructed despite its host of interesting characters although later critics have generally seen it as one of his very finest works despite its occasional verbosity.
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Brave New World
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| Brave New World is one of the most influential and powerful novels written in the twentieth century. It is one of the best known "dystopian" (implying "nightmare world") fictions alongside H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Huxley imagines a future world where children are processed genetically in bottles rather than conceived 'naturally', and belong to one of five classes according to their intelligence: from perfect "Alphas" down to moronic "Epsilons". Learning takes place by repetition teaching during sleep, but basically this consists of enforcing certain behaviour patterns through suggestion. This is backed up by the legal drug 'soma' that pacifies people through a false sense of fulfilment. The story is that of an unhappy Alpha-Plus man called Bernard Marx who is unusual for his genetic caste in being short and unorthodox in his ideas. He has fallen in love with a girl called Lenina, who he takes to an island of 'savages' where he meets a handsome young savage called John. This boy turns out to be the son of the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning and Bernard manages to bring him back to 'civilization'. The story follows John as he is treated as a circus freak. John's desire for Lenina that is ruined by his antiquated notions of love that derive from Shakespeare. John becomes the focus of the novel as it leads towards its sad conclusion. This is as successful a cautionary tale now as it was at the time of its publication in 1932, and is just as popular.
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Brave New World - Study Guide
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Call of the Wild Novel Guide
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Chaucer Works
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Classic Books Online
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Crime and Punishment
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| One of the most famous novels in world literature, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment from 1866 is a harrowing tale about one man’s attempt to escape the implications of a single dire act of murder. Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov - known as Rodya - is a handsome young student who, in an attempt to save his sister Dounia from marrying just to provide for him, kills a slovenly sixty-year old pawnbroker with a porter’s axe. During the killing her sister Lizaveta enters and he murders her too, burying the spoils. The story follows Rodya as he tries to elude detection at a police summons (he faints) and while another man, Nikolay the painter, is accused. Various other characters come into the equation such as Rodya’s student friend Razumihin who fears his mental collapse and Zametov the police clerk who is suspicious of the fainting incident. Episodes that follow include Rodya’s return to the department of investigation under Porfiry Petrovitch who tries to trap him psychologically and later lectures him pertinently on the criminal mind. We fear for Rodya and his untenable situation especially after his family receives something of a small fortune from Svidrigailov. Into this melee of strange circumstances comes Sonia - a pale girl from the streets - to whom Rodya confesses his crime. It is then a question of whether he should give himself up and if Dounia will forgive his act of foolishness. The path of Rodya’s life leads through these adventures to an acceptance of religion over individualism. |
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David Copperfield
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| by Dickens, Charles |
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David Copperfield
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David Copperfield - Study Guide
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Death of a Salesman - Study Guide
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Diary of Anne Frank Novel Guide
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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
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| The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was published in 1886 and is one of the best known of Stevenson’s novels. It concerns the way in which an individual is made up of contrary emotions and desires: some good and some evil. Through the curiosity of Utterson, a lawyer, we learn of the ugly and violent Mr Hyde and his odd connection to the respectable Dr Jekyll who pays out a cheque for Hyde’s despicable behaviour. A brutal murder follows. The dead man is one of Utterson’s clients, Sir Danvers Carew. The murder weapon was, unbelievably a cane Utterson had given to Jekyll. As such, the lawyer becomes entangled in the strange world of the physician Jekyll who it transpires has created a drug that separates his good and evil natures - purifying the doctor himself but with the ghastly side effect of periods spent as the monstrous Hyde. We follow Utterson as he investigates with Poole, Jekyll’s butler, the seeming contradictions in the doctor’s actions and his increasingly hermit-like existence in his laboratory. As the truth is about to surface, tragic events occur that end the whole affair dramatically and conclusively. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was a great success and it followed 1883’s fame-bringing Treasure Island (Stevenson’s first full-length novel).
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