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Read Me What to read 1801-1825

< 1751-1800 | 1826-1850 >

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Early 19th Century

Henry Walter BATES (1825-1892) Reference: Lefalophodon
The Naturalist on the River Amazon (1863)

Thomas Henry HUXLEY (1825-1895) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: The Huxley File T. H. Huxley advocated scientism--that is, the belief that there is no area of human experience or understanding into which science will not eventually advance, or which the scientific method will be unable to explain. --John Derbyshire, The New Criterion, February 2003, p. 14
Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences (1854)
A Lobster, or the Study of Geology (1861)
On the Zoological Relations of Man with the Lower Animals (1861)
Emancipation--Black and White (1865)
A Liberal Education (excerpt from 'A Liberal Education; and Where to Find It' delivered at the South London Working Men's College 1868)
Descartes' 'Discourse on Method' (1870)
Bishop Berkeley on the Metaphysics of Sensation (1871)
Administrative Nihilism (address to the mebmers of the Midland Institute, October 9, 1871)
On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science 1874)
The Coming of Age of 'The Origin of Species" (1880)
On the Method of Zadig (1880)
The Struggle for Existence in Human Society (1888)
Natural Rights and Political Rights (1890)
Letter to J. G. T. Sinclair (July 21, 1890)
On the Natural Inequality of Man (1890)
Evolution and Ethics (1893)
Science and the Christian Tradition (Vol. 5 from Collected essays 9 vols. 1893-94)

Sydney DOBELL (1824-1874)
The Ballad of Keith of Ravelston (in England in Time of War 1856)

Wilkie COLLINS (1824-1889) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Woman in White (1860)
No Name (1862)
The Moonstone (1868)

George MACDONALD (1824-1905) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Partridge
At the Back of the North Wind (1871)
Lilith (1895)

Sandor PETOFI (1823-1849)
Sandor Petofi: His entire poetic works (1972)

Alexander Nikolayevich OSTROVSKY (1823-1886) Etext: The Online Books Page
One star: The Thunderstorm (Groza 1860)
deals with life in a provincial town on the Volga, with its vindictiveness and narrow-mindedness. A wild, poetic girl called Katya falls in love with a man not her husband, and suffers the consequences... --Philip Ward

Ernst RENAN (1823-1892) Etext: Project Gutenberg
The Life of Jesus (1863)

Edward Augustus FREEMAN (1823-1892) Etext: The Online Books Page
History of the Norman Conquest (1867-1876)

Francis PARKMAN (1823-1893) Etext: The Online Books Page
The California and Oregon Trail (1849)
One star: France and England in North America (7 vol. 1865-1892)

Coventry PATMORE (1823-1896) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Unknown Eros (1877)

Alfred Russel WALLACE (1823-1913) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Smith Criticism: Rosen | Schilthuizen | Berry
Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (1853) In the company of Henry Walter Bates, the famous naturalist, explorer and writer, Alfred Russel Wallace spent four years from 1848 to 1852 in the Amazon basin. --J. A. Hammerton, Outline of Great Books (1937), p. 1084

Matthew ARNOLD (1822-1888) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: AAP
To a Friend (1849)
Empedocles on Aetna (from Empedocles on Etna and other Poems 1852)
On Translating Homer (1861)
Letter to Lady de Rothschild (December 28, 1861)
Spinoza and the Bible (1863)
Function of Criticism at the Present Time (1865)
Dover Beach (from New Poems 1867)
One star: Culture and Anarchy (1869) His concept of artistic excellence and of its critical appreciation by an educated elite provided the principal rationale for the teaching of the humanities for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. --Keith Windschuttle, The New Criterion, January 2002, p. 13
One star: Literature and Dogma (1873)
Mixed Essays (1879)
Study of Poetry (1888)
Thomas Gray (in Essays in Criticism: Second Series 1889)

Gregor Johann MENDEL (1822-1884) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Armstrong
Experiments in Plant Hybridization (1866)

Louis PASTEUR (1822-1895) Etext: The Online Books Page
Treatise on the Fermentation Known as Lactic (1857)

Edmond GONCOURT (1822-1896) and Jules de GONCOURT (1830-1870)
Journal (1851)

Sir Francis GALTON (1822-1911) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883)

Henry Thomas BUCKLE (1821-1862) Etext: The Online Books Page
History of Civilization in England (1857, 1861)

Charles BAUDELAIRE (1821-1867) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Criticism: post
One star: Les Fleurs du mal (1857; Flowers of Evil)
One star: Le spleen de Paris (1869; Paris Spleen)

Frederick Goddard TUCKERMAN (1821-1873)
"The Cricket" (1950)

Gustave FLAUBERT (1821-1880) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Delasanta
Three stars: Madame Bovary (1857) Criticism: James | Dirda | Byatt
Bovary herself is a frustrated Romantic, who finds no fulfillment in her marriage to a country doctor, and hardly any more in affairs with a local landowner and lawyer's clerk. --Philip Ward
Salammbo (1862)
Two stars: Sentimental Education (L'Education Sentimentale 1869)
Flaubert himself considered that the novel was doomed to popular failure because it destroys illusions, ironically reversing the 'sentimental' in favour of the realistic, and the Naturalistic novelist Huysmans called it the Bible of his school. --Philip Ward
A Simple Soul (Un Couer Simple 1877) from 'Three Tales' ('Trois Contes')

Henri Frederic AMIEL (1821-1881) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: BQ
Fragments of an Intimate Journal (1882)

Fyodor Mikhailovich DOSTOEVSKY [or Dostoyevsky] (1821-1881) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
White Nights (1848)
Notes from the Underground (1864)
These obsessional ruminations of a prisoner impressed me with the extremes of self-doubt and their paralyzing effect. The world of inner conflict and its determining power were vividly revealed. --John E. Mack
Three stars: Crime and Punishment (1866)
One star: The Idiot (1868-69)
The Possessed or The Devils (1872)
a distorted but magic and prophetic mirror that revealed the doings of those who were to stage the Revolution of 1917 and those whom the revolution was to topple. --Thor Sevcenko
Three stars: The Brothers Karamazov (Brat'ya Karamazovy 1880)
my introduction to rationality gone mad. The Grand Inquisitor and Ivan were characters of a ratonal age and were 'rational' men. They set my idea of freedom on its head. --Howard Frazier

Sir Richard Francis BURTON (1821-1890) Etext: The Online Books Page Thus his explorations in India, Arabia, Africa, and South America were notable for their breadth of personal encounter and their depth of informed observation. --John Reader, National Review, December 7, 1998, p. 68
One star: Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah (1855-1856)

Hermann von HELMHOLTZ (1821-1894) Etext: The Online Books Page
On the Conservation of Force (1847)

Friedrich ENGELS (1820-1895) Etext: Reference: Criticism: post
Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1844)
The German Ideology (1845, with Karl MARX)
Three stars: Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848, with Karl MARX) Criticism: Kenneth Rexroth essay
The proposition, in brief, is that the whole history of mankind, since it rose above primitive tribal societies, has been a history of class struggles, contests between ruling and oppressed classes. Further, the 'Manifesto' holds that only the proletariat could free society from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions, and class struggles. --Robert B. Downs
Anti-Duhring (1878)
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884)

Herbert SPENCER (1820-1903) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
Social Statics (1851)
First Principles (1862)
Principles of Biology (1864-67)
Principles of Ethics (1879-93)
The Man versus the State (1884)
Autobiography (1904)

Arthur Hugh CLOUGH (1819-1861)
Selected Poems (2006)

Gottfried KELLER (1819-1890) Etext: The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction Reference: post
Green Henry (1960; Der Grune Heinrich 1854-1855, rev. ed. 1880)
Seldwyla Folks: three Singular Tales (1919; from Die Leute von Seldwyla 1856-1874)

Walt WHITMAN (1819-1892) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
Three stars: Leaves of Grass (1855)
One star: Democratic Vistas (1871)
One star: A Backward Glance O'er Traveled Roads (1888)
Notes Left Over (1892)
Specimen Days (1892)

John RUSKIN (1819-1900) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Collingwood's Life
Modern Painters (1843) Ruskin was writing to advance the cause of J. M. W. Turner, who he believed was a great painter because he painted nature truthfully, in its greatness. That summary flattens considerably what Ruskin wrote, but it explains why there is so much of what we'd call 'nature writing' in a book ostensibly about art. --Phyllis Rose, 'Ruskin's Power', The American Scholar, Spring 2003, p. 88
The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849)
together with Pugin's and Morris's writings, really paved the way for modern architectural history and criticism, laying down criteria by which to judge buildings which were not simply those of Virtuvius or Alberti dressed up in 18th-century finery. --Raphael and McLeish
The Stones of Venice (3 vol. 1851-1853) ...he set out to show how Venice's great Gothic buildings emerged from a sound culture and how Venetian architecture became decadent along with the Venetian Republic. --Phyllis Rose, 'Ruskin's Power', The American Scholar, Spring 2003, p. 89
Unto This Last: Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy (1860)
Sesame and Lilies (lectures given at Rusholme, Nanchester 1864-1865)
The Crown of Wild Olive: : Three Lectures on Work, Traffic and War (1866)
Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne: Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work (1867)
The Queen of the Air: Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm (1869)
An Idealist's Arraignment of the Age (from Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain 4 vol. 1871-1880)
One star: Praeterita (1886-88) Then, when he had used himself in educating, when he was perpetually sad and indeed intermittently insane, he wrote on of the most beautiful autobiographies of all time, 'Praeterita'--things past. 'Praeterita' has the distinction of being the only work Ruskin wrote with the intention of PLEASING his readers. --Phyllis Rose, 'Ruskin's Power', The American Scholar, Spring 2003, p. 96

George ELIOT (Mary Anne Cross Evans, 1819-1880) Etext: , The Online Books Page Criticism: post She felt no call to found a new school of morals. --Edith Wharton
One star: Adam Bede (1859)
One star: The Mill on the Floss (1860)
One star: Silas Marner (1861)
Generations of high school students have been spoiled for George Eliot by being forced to read 'Silas Marner' at a tender age. One can imagine a whole new readership for her if grown-ups were left to approach 'Middlemarch' and 'Daniel Deronda' with open minds, at their leisure. --Katha Pollitt
Three stars: Middlemarch: a Study of Provincial Life (1871-72) Surely George Eliot knew exactly what it takes actually to *do* a great work, not just to *dream* greatly, and she hasn't endowed her heroine with those capacities. --Eva Brann, The Appreciative Mode, review of 'The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling' by Gertrude Himmelfarb, Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2006/07, p. 46
Its moral power is compelling; it makes on stop and think about what this life's purposes might be. --Robert Coles
Daniel Deronda (1876)

Herman MELVILLE (1819-1891) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
Typee (1846)
Three stars: Moby Dick; or, The Whale (1851) ...the white whale that Captain Ahab hunts not only is the beast that bit off his leg, but also symbolizes all the evil and negative aspects of existence. It is a primal, demonic force in the universe against which Ahab, like a modern Prometheus, hurls his defiance and struggles to the bitter end. --Seymour Cain, Imaginative Literature II: From Cervantes to Dostoevsky (1962), p.140 True story, recounted to me by a classmate and friend: English T.A.: 'Was anyone in this class disturbed, as I was, by the absence of women characters in this book?' Student, frustrated by weeks of this sort of thing: 'What do you expect, it's a book [Moby Dick] about whaling! There were no female whalers!' ----David Bernstein, The Volokh Conspiracy, March 27, 2008 at 10:18pm Captain Ahab’s obsession with the white whale leads to complete nautical disaster in this novel, as the vengeful protagonist finally bites off more than he can chew. Do you think Ahab should have taken a page out of “Jaws” and gotten a bigger boat? --Joe Queenan, There Will Be a Quiz, New York Times, April 6, 2008 --
Unquestionably the 'biggest' book in American literature, 'Moby Dick' wrestles with all the huge metaphysical questions--religious, epistemological, ontological, aesthetic--at the same time that it depicts in minute detail the U.S. whaling industry and through it examines questions of democracy and leadership. --Elizabeth McKinsey
Bartleby the Scrivener (collected in The Piazza Tales, 1856)
The Piazza Tales (1856)
The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857)
its black humor is that of the spirit of American political life, outrageous, surrealistic, and full of promises, false and true, kept and unkept, often not even intended. --Hale Champion
Clarel (1876)
One star: Billy Budd (1924)
Collected Poems (1993)

Theodor FONTANE (1819-1898) Etext: The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction Reference: post
One star: Effi Brest (1895)

Emily BRONTE (1818-1848) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Scharper
Poems (by Currer Bell, Ellis, and Acton Bell [Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte] 1846) Etext: The Old Stoic
Two stars: Wuthering Heights (1847) If Heathcliff had fallen in love with Jane Eyre or Elizabeth Bennet instead of Cathy, do you think his house would have burned down? --Joe Queenan, There Will Be a Quiz, New York Times, April 6, 2008 --
a remarkable first novel which springs from the dour people and countryside around Haworth and the moors where Emily spent her life. --Philip Ward

Karl MARX (1818-1883) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: In Defense of Marxism | Museum of Communism | Marxists Internet Archive | The People's Cube Criticism: post Marx achieved an improbable synthesis between the Hegelian metaphysic of history, the Jacobin interpretation of the Revolution, and the pessimistic theory of the market economy developed by British authors. --Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957), p. 311 In the Marxist view, the old communal frame, within which men had found security, has now been destroyed. Marx's importance lies not merely in his diagnosis of the processes leading to that destruction, but primarily in his prophecy of a new form of community. --Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (1966) p. 71 Friedrich Engels ... held that Marx was extending Darwin's work (that Marx was scientific in the way that Darwin was) into the realm of society. --Jeffrey L. Kasser, Philosophy of Science, Lecture 2: Popper and the Problem of Demarcation, The Teaching Company He showed precisely how to overthrow the existing order, but he did not say how matters should proceed thereafter. He simply presumed that with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political power and the socialization of means of production, the new Jerusalem would be realized. --Pope Benedict XVI, 'On Christian Hope' (Spe Salvi) 21, November 30, 2007
Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's "Philosophy of Right" (1843)
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1932)
This is the early, humanistic side of Marx. A profound critique of the central human problem of capitalism--alienation. --Orlando Patterson
The German Ideology (1845, with Friedrich ENGELS)
Three stars: Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848, with Friedrich ENGELS) Criticism: Kenneth Rexroth essay
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) This critique begins with the misperceptions the system imposes on those who have not learned to penetrate its facade, and who therefore remain at the level of its surface manifestations. Marx's first purpose is to show how the everyday concepts by which we seek to elucidate society--concepts such as 'labor' or 'capital'--are, in fact, deceiving outward appearances that we must learn to pierce, if we are to understand the actual processes of social existence. --Robert L. Heilbroner, 'Marxism: For and Against' (1980) p. 17
Two stars: Capital: A Critical Analysis (Vol. I, 1867)
it's not so much about economic determinism or materialism or state control of everything. Instead it's how the powerful got their power and what they did with it. --Duncan Kennedy
Critique of the Gotha Program (1875)

Ivan Sergeyevich TURGENEV (1818-1883) Etext: The Online Books Page
A Sportsman's Notebook (Zapiski Okhotnika 1852)
A Month in the Country (Mesiats v Derevne 1855, 1872)
One star: First Love (Pervaia Liubov 1860)
Two stars: Fathers and Sons (Ottsy i Deti 1862)
An Evening in Sorrento (Vecher v Sorrento 1882)
A Fire at Sea (1957) Etext: Isaiah Berlin

James Anthony FROUDE (1818-1894) Etext: The Online Books Page
A History of England (1856-1870)

Henry David THOREAU (1817-1862) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Thoreau home page Criticism: post
A Natural History of Massachusetts (1842)
Letter to Mr. B (Mar. 27, 1848)
Two stars: Civil Disobedience (Resistance to Civil Government 1849)
A minority should not yield to a majority if moral principles must be compromised in order to do so. Further, the state has no right to offend moral liberty by forcing the citizen to support injustices. Man's conscience should always be his supreme guiding spirit. --Robert B. Downs
A Week on the Concord and Marrimack Rivers (1849)
Three stars: Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854)
Its message was to simplify my life, to resist the attractiveness of the dominant cultural objective of pursing goods, to resist a narrow definition of fortune. --Howard Frazier
A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
Walking (1862, Atlantic Monthly)
Cape Cod (1865)
grapples with the concept of the margin, the amorphous zone neither wholly landscape nor wholly sea. There Thoreau enocountered the edge of fear, the awesome recognition that tiny Cape Cod thrusts into an alien element, an element so powerful that it shapes not only Cape Cod landscape, but Cape Cod life. --John R. Stilgoe
Life without Principle (1863, Atlantic Monthly)
Journal (14 vol. 1906)
Collected Poems (1943)

Theodor STORM (1817-1888) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: post
Immensee (1849)
Poems (1852)

Frederick DOUGLASS (1817?-1895) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
One star: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas (1845)

Charlotte BRONTE (1816-1855) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Herbert | Wallace | Scharper | see Gaskell instead of it being supposed that Cinderella has the advantage of physical beauty over the Ugly Sisters, it is supposed (as an absolute and more magical story) that it is they who are beautiful, and she who is ugly, though possessed of an invisible talisman of spiritual quality which wholly annuls the disadvantage. --Rebecca West, Charlotte Bronte, from The Great Victorians (H. J. and Hugh Massingham, eds. 1932), in The Essential Rebecca West, p. 429
Two stars: Jane Eyre (1847)
Villette (1853)

Philip James BAILEY (1816-1902) Reference: Wikipedia
Festus: A Poem (1839)

George BOOLE (1815-1864) Reference: HMA
Laws of Thought (1854)

Richard Henry DANA (1815-1882) Etext: The Online Books Page
One star: Two Years Before the Mast (1840)

Anthony TROLLOPE (1815-1882) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Bower | Kimball
I once infuriated an acquaintance by asserting that Trollope, although in many ways a lesser writer than Dickens, possessed some wonderful qualities that Dickens lacked: a more realistic view of women, a more skeptical view of good intentions, a subtler sense of humor, a drier vision of life which I myself found congenial. --Katha Pollitt
One star: The Warden (1855)
Orley Farm (1861-1862)
One star: The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)
One star: The Eustace Diamonds (1872)
One star: The Way We Live Now (1875)
An Autobiography (1883)

Mikhail LERMONTOV (1814-1841) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Tambov Treasurer's Wife (1965; Tambovskaia Kaznacheisha 1837-1838)
A Hero of Our Time (1853; Geroi Nashego Vremeni 1840) Criticism: Vyas
The Demon (1965; Demon 1841)

Mikhail A. BAKUNIN (1814-1876) Reference: Wikipedia
Philosophical Considerations (1871)

J. L. MOTLEY (1814-1877) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856)

Charles MACKAY (1814–1889)
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841, 1852) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Doug Brown review

Georg BUCHNER (1813-1837)
Danton's Death (1835)
Woyzeck (1837)

Soren KIERKEGAARD (1813-1855) Etext: The Online Books Page Study: Newman and Kierkegaard Criticism: post American Christianity has a lot in common with the Christianity in Kierkegaard's Copenhagen, insofar as it has become more of an ideology justifying middle-class living. --Rod Dreher, 'The politics of God', Sunday August 19, 2007 3:00pm Crunchy Con
One star: Either/Or (1843)
Fear and Trembling (1843)
Philosophic Fragments (1844)
Stages on Life's Way (1845)
Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846)
Works of Love (1847)
The Sickness Unto Death (1849)
Training in Christianity (1850)
Journals (1967-1978)

Claude BERNARD (1813-1878)
One star: Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865)
For the general reader it marks a watershed in the intellectual history of medicine from an empirical, somewhat mystical vocation to a profession based on scientific reality and experimentally verifiable phenomenon. --S. James Adelstein

Jones VERY (1813-1880)
Essays and Poems (1839)

Richard WAGNER (1813-1883) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
The Ring of the Nibelung (Der Ring des Nibelungen): The Rhinegold (Das Rheingold 1854); The Valkyrie (Die Walküre 1856); Siegfried (1871); Twilight of the Gods (Gotterdammerung 1874)

Charles DICKENS (1812-1870) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Times Topics | The Dickens Page Criticism: post
whose fourteen novels constitute the central tradition of English fiction. --Philip Ward
Three stars: The Pickwick Papers (1837)
Oliver Twist (1839)
Nicholas Nickleby (1839)
The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)
One star: A Christmas Carol (1843)
Martin Chuzzlewit (1844)
Dombey and Son (1848)
...I read [it] as a parable of Empire, the Dombey fortune extending tentacles of investment overseas while sickening at the center in the person of poor little Paul and holding somewhere in its clutches Major Joey Bagshot and his servant, called the Native. --Mary McCarthy
Two stars: David Copperfield (1850) No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens. --George Orwell, 'Charles Dickens' (1939)
No other book read in my youth gave me the kind of keen insights into the plight of mankind; the pathos of Dickensian London first awakened my social consciousness and the idealistic need to contribute and share. --Emanuel A. Friedman
Two stars: Bleak House (1853)
Two stars: Hard Times (1854) The best description of the divorce of work and family, and its effect on both, is probably Charles Dickens's 1854 novel 'Hard Times.' --Peter F. Drucker, 'Beyond the Information Revolution', The Atlantic Monthly, October 1999, p. 48
One star: Little Dorritt (1857)
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
I remember feeling that I could nearly palpate the passion of the murderous French anti-Royalists and, for the first time, appreciate the possibilty that chronic oppression could break down the barriers which normally block the expression of uncivilized instincts. --David M. Livingston
One star: Great Expectations (1861)
One star: Our Mutual Friend (1866) Once again, individual kindliness is the remedy for everything. --George Orwell, 'Charles Dickens' (1939)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)

Aleksandr HERZEN (1812-1870) Criticism: Isaiah Berlin lecture
From the Other Shore (1848-1850)
My Past and Thoughts (1868)

Edward LEAR (1812-1888) Etext: The Online Books Page
Complete Nonsense (1947)

Robert BROWNING (1812-1889) Etext: The Online Books Page
One star: Paracelsus (1835)
One star: Pippa Passes (1841)
Porphyra's Lover (Bells and Pomegranates No. III: Dramatic Lyrics 1842)
My Last Duchess (Bells and Pomegranates No. III: Dramatic Lyrics 1842)
One star: How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix (Bells and Pomegranates No. VII: Dramatic Romances and Lyrics 1845)
Meeting at Night ("I Night, II Morning" in Bells and Pomegranates No. VII: Dramatic Romances and Lyrics 1845)
The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church (Bells and Pomegranates No. VII: Dramatic Romances and Lyrics 1845)
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad (Bells and Pomegranates No. VII: Dramatic Romances and Lyrics 1845)
Home-Thoughts, from the sea (Bells and Pomegranates No. VII: Dramatic Romances and Lyrics 1845)
One star: Andrea Del Sarto (Men and Women 1855)
One star: A Grammarian's Funeral (Men and Women 1855)
One star: Bishop Blougram's Apology
A Toccata of Galuppi's (Men and Women 1855)
The Last Ride Together (Men and Women 1855)
A Woman's Last Word (Men and Women 1855)
One star: Rabbi Ben Ezra (Dramatis Personae 1864)
One star: A Death in the Desert (Dramatis Personae 1864)
Abt Vogler (Dramatis Personae 1864)
Prospice (Dramatis Personae 1864)
Two stars: The Ring and the Book (1868-1869)
One star: The Inn Album (1875)
One star: Shop (1876)

Ivan Alexandrovich GONCHAROV (1812-1891) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
The Frigate Pallada (1858)
One star: Oblomov (1859)
...an attack on the lazy landowners who thoughtlessly relied on the labour of others. --Philip Ward

William Makepeace THACKERAY (1811-1863) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
Two stars: Vanity Fair (1847-48)
...privilege and success are not necessarily eternal even for the brightest and/or the most well-intentioned people. ...there might be unfortunate consequences to taking those who are apparently dependent or less fortunate for granted. --David M. Livingston
The End of the Play (1848)
Pendennis (1848-1850)
The History of Henry Esmond (1852)
The Virginians (1857-1859)

Theophile GAUTIER (1811-1822) Etext: The Online Books Page
Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835)
Enamels and Cameos (Emaux et camees 1852)

Harriet Beecher STOWE (1811-1896) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
One star: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
In historical perspective, the significance of the novel is as a sociological document rather than as a literary classic or work of art. --Robert B. Downs

Eugenie de GUERIN (1810-1839) Criticism: post
Journal ("The Green Notebook", 1861)

Alfred de MUSSET (1810-1857) Etext: The Online Books Page
Lorenzaccio (1833)
A Selection From The Poetry And Comedies Of Alfred De Musset (1895)

Elizabeth Cleghorn GASKELL (1810-1865) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: The Gaskell Web
Mary Barton (1848)
Cranford (1851-1853)
North and South (1854-1855)
The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857)
Mrs Gaskell knew Charlotte well; the biography, though sentimental and reticent, gives an authentic picture of Bronte Yorkshire and is unique as a contemporary account by another woman writer. --Raphael and McLeish

John BROWN (1810-1882) Etext: The Online Books Page
Horae Subsecivae (1859)

Edgar Allan POE (1809-1849) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) blazed the trail leading to what is now called science fiction. --Clifton Fadiman, The Lifetime Reading Plan (1960), p. 123
One star: William Wilson (1839) In his strange and morbid stories we find many anticipations of modern psychology, including the motif of the death wish and that of the split personality... --Clifton Fadiman, The Lifetime Reading Plan (1960), p. 124
Two stars: The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
Two stars: The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) he not only invented the detective story but practically exhausted its possibilities. --Clifton Fadiman, The Lifetime Reading Plan (1960), p. 123
Two stars: The Gold Bug (1843)
Two stars: The Purloined Letter (1844)
Two stars: The Cask of Amontillado (1846)
Eureka (1848)

Nikolai Vasilievich GOGOL (1809-1852) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Morson
One star: Dead Souls (1842) Criticism: Westphalen | Byatt
The Government Inspector (1842)
The Complete Tales (2 vol. 1985)

Abraham LINCOLN (1809-1865) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Lincoln Studies Center | The Abraham Lincoln Association | The Papers of Abraham Lincoln Criticism: post
Speech on the Mexican War (January 12, 1848)
Speech at Peoria, Illinois (October 6, 1854) Criticism: Joseph R. Fornieri review | Lucas Morel review
Speech at Springfield, Illinois (June 26, 1857)
Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (September 30, 1859) Etext: Teaching American History
Address at Cooper Institute (February 27, 1860) Criticism: Allen C. Guelzo review
Political Debates...in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois (1860, with Stephen A. DOUGLAS, 1813-1861) Criticism: Diana Schaub review essay
First Inaugural Address (1861)
Annual Message to Congress (December 3, 1861)
One star: The Gettysburg Address (1863) Humor: Peter Norvig parody
Reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association (1864)
Address at Sanitary Fair (April 18, 1864))
Speech to the National Urban League Delegation (June 9, 1864)
Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865) Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort. --Frederick Douglass

Pierre Joseph PROUDHON (1809-1865) Etext: The Online Books Page
What Is Property? or an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government (1840) in his case definite economic error is much more in evidence than it is with most of the other classics of anarchism who despised economic argument and, whether stressing the idea of free and stateless co-operation of individuals or the task of destruction to be accomplished to make way for it, avoided errors of reasoning largely by avoiding reasoning. --Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (3rd ed. 1950) Ch. XXIV p. 307

Charles DARWIN (Charles Robert Darwin 1809-1882) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Criticism: post It has often been remarked that the phrase that best summarizes Darwinism (even though Herbert Spencer used it first) is a tautology: survival of the fittest. Who survives? The fittest. Who are the fittest? Those who survive. -D. T. Max, 'Two Cheers for Darwin', The American Scholar, Spring 2003, p. 69
Two stars: The Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle (1845)
The most important event in Darwin's life, determining his whole career, was his five-year voyage as naturalist on HMS Beagle, 1831-1836. During this period, the Beagle touched on nearly every continent and major island as she circled the world. --Robert B. Downs
Four stars: The Origin of Species (1859, 6th Ed. 1882) full title: On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life The theory of Darwin, true or not, is not necessarily atheistic; on the contrary, it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Providence and Skill. --John Henry Newman (1868)
It is technically accessible to any intelligent reader. It is a genuinely participatory experience. --Thomas C. Schnelling
The Descent of Man (1871) full title: The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex What we have here is nothing less than a natural history of morals--a theory of how the moral sense developed, based on observations of animal life, and the connected inferences and hypotheses. --Seymour Cain, Ethics: The Study of Moral Values (1962), p. 280
Autobiography (1887)

Alexander William KINGLAKE (1809-1891)
Eothen (1844)

One star: Lord TENNYSON (Alfred Tennyson 1809-1892) Etext: The Online Books Page
Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights (1833)
One star: Morte d’Arthur (Poems 1842)
One star: Sir Galahad (Poems 1842)
Locksley Hall (Poems 1842)
The Lotus Eaters (Poems 1842)
Ulysses (Poems 1842)
The Princess (1847)
One star: In Memoriam (1850)
One star: The Charge of the Light Brigade (The Examiner December 9, 1854)
Idylls of the King (1859) 'Bertie, do you read Tennyson?' 'Not if I can help.' --P. G. Wodehouse, 'Right Ho, Jeeves', Chapter 23
Flowers in the Crannied Wall (1869)
Guinevere (1877)
One star: The Revenge (1878)
To Virgil (1882)
Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886)
Crossing the Bar (1889)

Oliver Wendell HOLMES (1809-1894) Etext: The Online Books Page
Old Ironsides (1830)
The Chambered Nautilus (1858)
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1857)

Gerard de NERVAL (Gerard Labrunie 1808-1858)
Sylvie (1853)
The Chimeras (Les Chimeres, from Les Filles du feu 1854) Etext: Daniel Mark Epstein translation
Aurelia (Aurelia; ou, Le Reve et la vie 1855)

Louis AGASSIZ (Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz 1807-1873) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: James S. Aber fan site Agassiz insists that ancient animals resemble to a certain extent the embryos of recent animals of the same classes; or that the geological succession of extinct forms is in some degree parallel to the embryological development of recent forms. --Charles Darwin, 'The Origin of Species' (1859), Ch. X
Studies on Glaciers (1840)

Henry Wadsworth LONGFELLOW (1807-1882) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Tim Bartel essay
One star: Selected Poems (1988) Criticism: John Derbyshire review

John Greenleaf WHITTIER (1807-1892) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Roger Blackwell Bailey bibliography Criticism: post
One star: Randolph of Roanoke (1846)
One star: The Barefoot Boy (1855)
One star: The Pipes at Lucknow (Home ballads and poems 1861)
One star: Barbara Frietchie (1863)
One star: Barclay of Ury (The Pennsylvania pilgrim,: and other poems 1872)

John Stuart MILL (1806-1873) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
Review of Tocqueville's Democracy in America (London Review October 1835)
A System of Logic (1843) saw logic as an investigative tool for the analysis of all philosophical issues. All empirical knowledge of the external world was to be gained through a process of inductive logic. --Byron E. Wall, 'John Venn, James Wood and the Chair of Mental Philosophy and Logic at the University of Cambridge, Journal of the History of Ideas, January 2007, p. 132
One star: Principles of Political Economy (1848) full title: Principles of Political Economy, with some of their applications to Social Philosophy John Stuart Mill By a mighty effort of will, Overcame his natural bonhomie and wrote 'Principles of Political Economy'. --Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Three stars: On Liberty (1859) Criticism: William D. Gairdner essay There may be no entirely satisfactory answer to this question, but some determination of what is private and what is public is necessary to determine the proper scope of government and the sphere of individual liberty. --Peter Wolff, The Development of Political Theory and Government (1959), p. 207 in the first lines ... he sets aside with open disdain the question of free will, to ask instead the question of 'Civil, or Social Liberty.' --Joseph Bottum, Death and Politics, First Things, June/July 2007, p. 26
it combined a position I found congenial, the careful marshalling of reasons and also great rhetorical force--hence the ease of quoting. --Robert Nozick
One star: Considerations on Representative Government (1861) ...the first great work of political theory which argues for the proposition that democracy is the ideal form of government. --Peter Wolff, The Development of Political Theory and Government (1959), p. 177
One star: Utilitarianism (1863) According to it, behavior conforming to that principle was not merely the only rational and justifiable but *ipso facto* also the 'natural' one. This proposition is the bridge between the otherwise very different theories of Bentham and Rousseau's *contrat social*... --Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (3rd ed. 1950) Ch. XX pp. 248-249 The utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill arose out of a markedly different intellectual environment, and was more closely related to the empirical philosophy of a David Hume than to the metaphysical vision of a Plato. Because of this accord with the modern temper, utilitarianism had a decisive effect on ethical, social, and political thought in the past century and a half, as well as on social and political developments. --Seymour Cain, Ethics: The Study of Moral Values (1962), p. 258 Utilitarinism is a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of things and not of persons, a civilization in which persons are used in the same way things are used. --John Paul II, Letter to Families, 13
Inaugural Address at St. Andrews (1867)
One star: Autobiography (1873)
One star: The Subjection of Women (1873)
Nature (1874)

George FITZHUGH (1806-1881) Etext: The Online Books Page
Sociology for the South, or, The Failure of Free Society (1855)

Alexis de TOCQUEVILLE (Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel de Tocqueville 1805-1859) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Criticism: post
Journey to America (1831-1832, translated by George Lawrence 1960)
Letter to Eugene Stoffels (Feb. 21, 1835)
One star: Democracy in America (1835-40) ...Robert Nisbet's highly praised and oft-cited 'Many Tocquevilles', which appeared in The American Scholar in the winter of 1976–77, most closely conforms to Frank Kermode's characterization of canonical works as those that 'negate the distinction between knowledge and opinion'. Nisbet's sweeping, completely unsubstantiated, and easily disconfirmed chain of ipse dixits formed the essential core of what 'everybody knows' about variations in Tocqueville's influence over time—they attained the status of conventional wisdom. And in doing so they inflicted serious and continuing harm on this area of American intellectual history. --Matthew J. Mancini
De Tocqueville's historical and sociological analysis, like Rousseau's political theory, help the reader get outside the commonplace understandings of democracy prevalent today. --Gerald E. Frug

Hans Christian ANDERSEN (1805-1875) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Norman Berdichevsky essay | Kathryn Hughes review | Alexandra Mullen review
Andersen's Fairy Tales (1835)

Thomas WADE (1805-1875)
Poems (in The Poems and Plays 1997)

Nathaniel HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
One star: The Minister's Black Veil (Twice-Told Tales 1837)
One star: Young Goodman Brown (Mosses from an Old Manse 1846, 1854)
One star: Rappaccini's Daughter (Mosses from an Old Manse 1846, 1854)
One star: The Birthmark (Mosses from an Old Manse 1846, 1854)
Two stars: The Scarlet Letter (1850)
The Marble Faun (1860) Criticism: James Russell Lowell review
American Notebooks (edited by Sophia Hawthorne 1883)

Ludwig Andreas FEUERBACH (1804-1872)
Feuerbach's claim that all theology is actually disguised anthropology, that all religion is really a projection of human subjectivity and feelings onto a cosmic screen, is the fountainhead of much modern interpretation of religion. --Godon D. Kaufman
The Essence of Christianity (1841)

Eduard MORIKE (1804-1875)
Mozart on His Way to Prague (Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag 1855)
Selected Poems (1972)

George SAND (1804-1876) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
The Haunted Pool (La Mare au diable 1890)

Thomas Lovell BEDDOES (1803-1849) Reference: LitWeb
Death's Jest Book (1850)
Poems (1851)

Hector BERLIOZ (1803-1864)
Memoirs (1870) Determined to avoid a kiss-and-tell confession, Berlioz refracted his life through his art. --James Marcus, Atlantic Monthly, March 2002, p. 122

George BORROW (1803-1881) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Bible in Spain (1834)
Lavengro (1851)
It tells of a young wanderer-scholar who has mastered the Romany tongue and is befriended by a company of English gypsies. --Daniel Aaron
The Romany Rye (1857)

Ralph Waldo EMERSON (1803-1882) Etext: The Online Books Page | Emerson: Essays Reference: Emerson Central Criticism: post
Letter to Thomas Carlyle (October 7, 1835)
One star: Nature (1836) In the nineteenth century, Emerson was still living off the crumbs of the Puritan heritage, even as he discarded the last vestiges of Puritan doctrine. --Peter J. Leithart, The Nature of America, review of 'From Nature to Experience: The American Search for Cultural Authority', by Roger Lundin, First Things, March 2007, p. 46
One star: The American Scholar (1837)
Concord Hymn (1837)
War (March 1838)
Address to the Harvard Divinity School (July 15, 1838)
Literary Ethics (1838)
Demonology (1839)
Man the Reformer (January 25, 1841)
The Conservative (December 9, 1841)
Two stars: Essays (Essays: First Series History, Self-Reliance(also: Understanding 'Self-Reliance'), Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles, Intellect, Art 1841; Essays: Second Series The Poet, Experience, Character, Manners, Gifts, Nature, Politics, Nominalist and Realist, New England Reformers 1844)
New England Reformers (1844)
Give All to Love (1846)
The Rhodora (Poems 1847)
One star: Representative Men (1849)
One star: English Traits (1856)
Brahma (1857)
Illusions (Atlantic Monthly November 1857)
Considerations by the Way (The Conduct of Life 1860)
Culture (The Conduct of Life 1860)
Fate (The Conduct of Life 1860)
Wealth (The Conduct of Life 1860)
Worship (The Conduct of Life 1860)
In Praise of Books (1860)
Amercian Civilization (The Atlantic Monthly 1862)
Boston Hymn (January 1, 1863)
Terminus (1866)
The Informing Spirit (May-Day and Other Pieces 1867)
Works and Days (Society and Solitude 1870)
Poetry and Imagination (1872; Letters and Social Aims 1883)
Journals [1819-1874]
Threnody (Early Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson 1899)
Success Criticism: misattributed to Emerson per The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society
Poems (1899)
The Portable Emerson (anthology 1946)

Alexandre DUMAS (1802-1870) Etext: Literature Network: | The Online Books Page
The Three Musketeers (1844)
The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-1845)
dealing with the past is always talking about people, the imagination is part of the historian's trade, that the past can be fun, and especially that such contemporary terms as 'model', 'scenario', and 'intervention' are nothing but fancy transformations of a novelist's plot to grab a reader's attention. --Oleg Graber
Memoirs (1852-54)

Victor Marie HUGO (1802-1885) Etext: Electronic text: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
One star: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris 1831)
One star: Les Miserables (1862)
it served to convince me a worthy cause merited the struggle, win or lose and regardless of the odds. --Emanuel A. Friedman
William Shakespeare (1864)
The Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la Mer 1866)
The End of Satan (1886)
God (1891)
The Distance, The Shadows; Selected Poems (1997) ...talking poetry with Hugo is like talking theology with the Lord God. --Theophile Gautier

John Henry NEWMAN (1801-1890) Etext: The Online Books Page Study: McInerny Reference: Criticism: post
Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845)
Lecture on Anglican Difficulties (1850)
Idea of a University (1852 and 1858)
One star: Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864)
The Dream of Gerontius (1865)
The Grammar of Assent (1870)

< 1751-1800 | 1826-1850 >



Revised July 4, 2010.

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