Reading Rat

What to read 1801-1825

\/ 1751-1800 | 1826-1850 /\

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'Tis the good reader that makes the good book. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

\/ Early 19th Century

Henry Walter BATES (1825-1892) The Online Books Page Lefalophodon
an English naturalist and explorer who gave the first scientific account of mimicry in animals. He was most famous for his expedition to the rainforests of the Amazon with Alfred Russel Wallace --Wikipedia

The Naturalist on the River Amazon (1863)

Thomas Henry HUXLEY (1825-1895) The Online Books Page Charles Blinderman fan site
an English biologist (comparative anatomist), known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. --Wikipedia
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

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 (1868)
excerpt from 'A Liberal Education; and Where to Find It' delivered at the South London Working Men's College

Descartes' 'Discourse on Method' (1870)

Bishop Berkeley on the Metaphysics of Sensation (1871)

Administrative Nihilism (address to the members 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)
Application of Darwinian evolution to man's morality by one of Darwin's great champions. --Raphael and McLeish

Science and the Christian Tradition (Vol. 5 from Collected essays 9 vols. 1893-94)

Sydney Thompson DOBELL (1824-1874) The Online Books Page | Poem Hunter
...English poet and critic --Wikipedia | ...English poet of the so-called Spasmodic school. --Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Ballad of Keith of Ravelston (in England in Time of War, 1856)

Wilkie COLLINS (1824-1889) The Online Books Page
an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. --Wikipedia

The Woman in White (1860)

No Name (1862)

The Moonstone (1868)
T. S. Eliot called this 'the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels.' --Raphael and McLeish

George MACDONALD (1824-1905) The Online Books Page George MacDonald Society
a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister.... He is now known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy works --Wikipedia

Lilith (1895)

Sandor PETOFI (1823-1849) The Online Books Page | Poem Hunter
a Hungarian poet and liberal revolutionary. He is considered Hungary's national poet, and was one of the key figures of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 --Wikipedia

Sandor Petofi: His entire poetic works (1972)

Alexander OSTROVSKY (1823-1886) The Online Books Page
a Russian playwright, generally considered the greatest representative of the Russian realistic period. --Wikipedia

The Storm (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

Ernest RENAN (1823-1892) The Online Books Page | Project Gutenberg
a French expert of Middle East ancient languages and civilizations, philosopher and writer... He is best known for his influential historical works on early Christianity and his political theories, especially concerning nationalism and national identity --Wikipedia

The Life of Jesus (Vie de Jesus, 1863)
At first the orthodox rejected his opinions and the unorthodox his sentiments, but the book survived their disputes and served to open a new epoch in religious criticism. --J. A. Hammerton

Edward Augustus FREEMAN (1823-1892) The Online Books Page

History of the Norman Conquest (1867-1876)

Francis PARKMAN (1823-1893) The Online Books Page
an American historian ... . He was also a leading horticulturist, --Wikipedia

The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life or The California and Oregon Trail (1847-1849)
Parkman, a frail Harvard graduate, followed the track of Lewis and Clark and in the process became a man--and a great historian. --Raphael and McLeish

France and England in North America (7 vol. 1865-1892)

Coventry PATMORE (1823-1896) The Online Books Page

The Unknown Eros (1877)

Alfred Russel WALLACE (1823-1913) The Online Books Page Charles H. Smith fan site Andrew Berry review | Jonathan Rosen essay
a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection --Wikipedia

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

Matthew ARNOLD (1822-1888) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation | Academy of American Poets
a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. --Wikipedia

To a Friend (1849)

Empedocles on Aetna (from Empedocles on Etna and other Poems 1852)

On Translating Homer (1861)
Penetratingly lucid about the principles of translation, with deft examples and comparisons. --Raphael and McLeish

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)

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

Literature and Dogma (1873)

Mixed Essays (1879)

Study of Poetry (1888)

Thomas Gray (in Essays in Criticism: Second Series 1889)

Gregor MENDEL (1822-1884) The Online Books Page Chris Armstrong essay
a German-speaking Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the new science of genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns --Wikipedia

Experiments in Plant Hybridization (Versuche uber Pflanzenhybriden, 1866)

Louis PASTEUR (1822-1895) The Online Books Page
a French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. --Wikipedia

Treatise on the Fermentation Known as Lactic (Memoire sur la fermentation appelee lactique, 1857)

GONCOURT brothers
Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896) The Online Books Page
Jules de Goncourt (1830-1870) The Online Books Page
both French naturalism writers... . They are known for their literary work and for their diaries, which offer an intimate view into the French literary society of the later 19th century. --Wikipedia

Journal (Journal des Goncourt, 1851-1896)
the Goncourt brothers' engagingly jaundiced eyes evaluate their celebrated contemporaries with scant regard for their public image. --Raphael and McLeish

Francis GALTON (1822-1911) The Online Books Page post
an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician. ... He was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence --Wikipedia

Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883)
proved the starting point of the movement in favour of national eugenics. --J. A. Hammerton

Henry Thomas BUCKLE (1821-1862) The Online Books Page

History of Civilization in England (1857, 1861)

Charles BAUDELAIRE (1821-1867) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation | Academy of American Poets Kenneth Rexroth review | Kenneth Rexroth essay | post
a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. --Wikipedia

The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal, 1857)
Classical in form, personal in outlook, Baudelaire's poetry has a weight and dignity in keeping with his themes of human suffering and the limits of love: and he evokes brilliantly the bustle and sleaziness of urban life. --Raphael and McLeish

Paris Spleen (Le spleen de Paris, 1869)

Frederick Goddard TUCKERMAN (1821-1873) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation

"The Cricket" (1950)
So Tuckerman has emerged at last from the obscurity which the retirement of his life invited. --Edmund Wilson

Gustave FLAUBERT (1821-1880) The Online Books Page
an influential French writer widely considered one of the greatest novelists in Western literature. --Wikipedia

Madame Bovary (1857) Clive James review | Michael Dirda review | A. S. Byatt review
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)
Salammbo, his 'failure', is a terrific case of historical verbosity (life in old Carthage): overwritten, magnificent. --Raphael and McLeish

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, from Trois Contes, 1877 ["Three Tales"])
Flaubert creates a fi ne counterpoint between the great world’s events and the small life of one housemaid, making us wonder how to measure greatness. --Arnold Weinstein

Henri-Frederic AMIEL (1821-1881) The Online Books Page
a Swiss philosopher, poet and critic. --Wikipedia

Fragments of an Intimate Journal (Journal Intime, 1882)

Fyodor DOSTOYEVSKY (1821-1881) The Online Books Page post
a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. --Wikipedia

White Nights (Belye nochi, 1848)

Notes from the Underground (Zapiski iz podpol'ya, 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

Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye, 1866)
...Dostoyevsky's capacity to dramatize deadly, comic dilemmas of Russian life under the Tsars makes him the master whose 'Crime and Punishment' is the best introduction. --Raphael and McLeish

The Idiot (Idiot, 1868-69)

Demons or The Possessed (Besy, 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

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

Richard Francis BURTON (1821-1890) The Online Books Page
an English geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. --Wikipedia
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

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah (1855)

Hermann von HELMHOLTZ (1821-1894) The Online Books Page Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science. --Wikipedia

On the Conservation of Force (1847)

On thought in medicine (Das denken in der medizin August 2, 1877)

Goethe's Presentiments of Coming Scientific Ideas (1892)

Friedrich ENGELS (1820-1895) The Online Books Page post
a German social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. --Wikipedia

Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1844)
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 (Herrn Eugen Duhrings Umwalzung der Wissenschaft, 1878)

The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884)

See collaborations with Karl Marx)

Herbert SPENCER (1820-1903) The Online Books Page post
an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era. ... Spencer is best known for coining the expression "survival of the fittest" --Wikipedia

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) The Online Books Page
an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to ground-breaking nurse Florence Nightingale. --Wikipedia

Selected Poems (2006)

Gottfried KELLER (1819-1890) The Online Books Page | The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction W. Morgenthaler fan site
a Swiss poet and writer of German literature. ...he became one of the most popular narrators of literary realism in the late 19th century. --Wikipedia

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) The Online Books Page post
an American poet, essayist and journalist. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. --Wikipedia

Leaves of Grass (1855)

Democratic Vistas (1871)

A Backward Glance O'er Traveled Roads (1888)

Notes Left Over (1892)

Specimen Days (1892)

John RUSKIN (1819-1900) The Online Books Page W. G. Collingwood biography
the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. --Wikipedia

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

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

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)

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

George ELIOT (1819-1880) The Online Books Page post
an English novelist, journalist, and translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. ... She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously. --Wikipedia
She felt no call to found a new school of morals. --Edith Wharton

Adam Bede (1859)

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

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

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
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) The Online Books Page post
an American writer of novels, short stories and poetry. ...after a fast-blooming literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s... . It was not until the "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century that his work won recognition --Wikipedia

Typee (1846)

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 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)

Billy Budd (1924)
When innocent Billy accidentally kills the scheming Claggart aboard the HMS Bellipotent during wartime, Captain Vere must decide his fate. --Grant L. Voth

Collected Poems (1993)

Theodor FONTANE (1819-1898) The Online Books Page | The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction
a German novelist and poet, regarded by many as the most important 19th-century German-language realist writer. --Wikipedia

Effi Brest (1895)

Emily BRONTE (1818-1848) The Online Books Page Diane Scharper review
an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. --Wikipedia

Wuthering Heights (1847)
The supreme Romantic fiction, archtypal and idiosyncratic for passion and for surging self-justifying conviction; no parody can match its hysterics, but Heathcliff continues to lord it over his detractors, both in the story and without. --Raphael and McLeish

See collaboration with Charlotte Bronte

also

The Old Stoic The Guardian (October 29, 2004)

Karl MARX (1818-1883) The Online Books Page In Defense of Marxism | Museum of Communism | Marxists Internet Archive The People's Cube John Lanchester essay | post
a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Marx's work in economics laid the basis for the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and has influenced much of subsequent economic thought. --Wikipedia
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
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
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. --Benedict XVI

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)

Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848, with Friedrich Engels) Kenneth Rexroth essay
According to Marx, the fulfillment of the communist dream requires the disappearance of an entirely corrupt class. There is no moral blame attached to the revolutionaries who exterminate this class, and there is certainly no God to keep accounts. So it's no surprise that communism advanced by epic brutality. --Benjamin Wiker

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

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 TURGENEV (1818-1883) The Online Books Page
a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. --Wikipedia

A Sportsman's Notebook (Zapiski Okhotnika, 1852)
Sketches of 19th-century Russian peasant life characterized by what V. S. Pritchett called 'their simple feeling and transparency'. --Raphael and McLeish

A Month in the Country (Mesiats v Derevne, 1855, 1872)

First Love (Pervaia Liubov, 1860)

Fathers and Sons (Ottsy i Deti, 1862)

An Evening in Sorrento (Vecher v Sorrento, 1882)

also

A Fire at Sea Isaiah Berlin [mp3]

James Anthony FROUDE (1818-1894) The Online Books Page
an English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine. --Wikipedia

A History of England (1856-1870)

Jacob BURCKHARDT (1818-1897) The Online Books Page
a historian of art and culture, and an influential figure in the historiography of each field. He is known as one of the major progenitors of cultural history. --Wikipedia

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1878 S. G. C. Middlemore translation; Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, 1860)
In these pages is the Italian Renaissance of our imaginations, a realm of overreachers and beatific courtesans, of timeless works of art and Machiavellian Realpolitik. --Michael Dirda

Henry David THOREAU (1817-1862) The Online Books Page Walden Woods Project post
an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. --Wikipedia

A Natural History of Massachusetts (1842)

Letter to Mr. B (Mar. 27, 1848)

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)

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) The Online Books Page post

Immensee (1849)

Poems (1852)

Frederick DOUGLASS (1817?-1895) The Online Books Page post
an African-American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement --Wikipedia

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
intends his story to move the reader's imagination and horror at what it truly means for one man to be chattel of another. --Michael Dirda

Charlotte BRONTE (1816-1855) The Online Books Page Ian Herbert essay | Diane Scharper review | see Elizabeth Gaskell life
an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Bronte sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels are English literature standards. --Wikipedia

Poems, , by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846, with Emily Bronte and Anne Bronte, 1820-1849)

Jane Eyre (1847)
'Realistic' wish fulfillment in which the wish-bone sticks in the heroine's throat until a happily painful operation gives her the stars while denying her the moon. --Raphael and McLeish

Villette (1853)

also

L’Ingratitude (March 16, 1842; Ingratitude, translated by Sue Lonoff) London Review of Books (March 8, 2012)

Philip James BAILEY (1816-1902) The Online Books Page
an English Spasmodic poet --Wikipedia

Festus: A Poem (1839)

Elizabeth Cady STANTON (1815-1902) The Online Books Page
an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women's rights movement. --Wikipedia

Declaration of Sentiments or Declaration of Rights and Sentiments (1848)

Solitude of Self (1892)

Richard Henry DANA, Jr. (1815-1882) The Online Books Page
an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, a descendant of an eminent colonial family --Wikipedia

Two Years Before the Mast (1840)

Anthony TROLLOPE (1815-1882) The Online Books Page Colin Bower essay | Roger Kimball essay
one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. --Wikipedia
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

The Warden (1855)

Orley Farm (1861-1862)

The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)

The Eustace Diamonds (1872)

The Way We Live Now (1875)

An Autobiography (1883)

George BOOLE (1815-1864) The Online Books Page The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
an English mathematician, philosopher and logician. ... As the inventor of the prototype of what is now called Boolean logic, which became the basis of the modern digital computer, Boole is regarded in hindsight as a founder of the field of computer science. --Wikipedia

Laws of Thought (1854)

Mikhail LERMONTOV (1814-1841) The Online Books Page
a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. --Wikipedia

The Tambov Treasurer's Wife (1965; Tambovskaia Kaznacheisha, 1837-1838)

A Hero of Our Time (1853; Geroi Nashego Vremeni, 1840) Ravi Vyas review

The Demon (1965; Demon, 1841)

Sheridan LE FANU (1814-1873) The Online Books Page
an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the nineteenth century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. --Wikipedia

Uncle Silas (1864)
Dissolute and profligate, elegant and hypnotically charming, Silas has squandered vast sums of money and committed unspeakable crimes, possibly even murder. Maud, naturally (or unnaturally), grows half infatuated with her Byronic uncle, over whose youthful portrait she moons. --Michael Dirda

In a Glass Darkly (1872)
Le Fanu's 'Green Tea' has been called the archetypal weird tale and his even more disturbing 'Carmilla' the best of all vampire stories. --Michael Dirda

Mikhail BAKUNIN (1814-1876) The Online Books Page Paul McLaughlin paper | Paul Mclaughlin extended essay
a Russian revolutionary, libertarian socialist, and founder of "collectivist anarchism" philosophy --Wikipedia

Philosophical Considerations on the Divine Phantom, on the Real World, and on Man (1870)

John Lothrop MOTLEY (1814-1877) The Online Books Page
an American historian and diplomat. --Wikipedia

The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856)

Charles MACKAY (1814–1889) The Online Books Page
a Scottish poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter --Wikipedia

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841, 1852) Doug Brown review

Georg BUCHNER (1813-1837) The Online Books Page
a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose. He was also a revolutionary, [and] a natural scientist --Wikipedia

Danton's Death (1835)

Woyzeck (1837)

Soren KIERKEGAARD (1813-1855) The Online Books Page post
a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. --Wikipedia
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', Crunchy Con, August 19, 2007 3:00 pm

Either/Or (1843)
These pages [Diary of a Seducer] form the climax of part one of Either/Or, and have always been that long book's most famous--even notorious--section, frequently published on its own as a kind of short novel. --Michael Dirda

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) The Online Books Page
a French physiologist. ...he was one of the first to suggest the use of blind experiments to ensure the objectivity of scientific observations. He was the first to define the term milieu interieur, now known as homeostasis. --Wikipedia

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) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation | Poetry Archive
an American poet, essayist, clergymen, and mystic associated with the American Transcendentalism movement. --Wikipedia

Essays and Poems (1839)

Richard WAGNER (1813-1883) The Online Books Page Nicholas Spice essay | post
a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas --Wikipedia

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) The Online Books Page Times Topics | Mitsuharu Matsuoka fan site Tim Parks review | post
an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters --Wikipedia
whose fourteen novels constitute the central tradition of English fiction. --Philip Ward

The Pickwick Papers (1837)

Oliver Twist (1839)

Nicholas Nickleby (1839)

The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)

A Christmas Carol (1843) Dan Piraro comic

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

David Copperfield (1850)
No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens. --George Orwell
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
At age thirteen, David Copperfield often seems less of an invitation to Bleak House than a clarion call for Cliffs Notes. --Anna Quindlen

Bleak House (1853)

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

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

Great Expectations (1861)
Dickens was a master of sentimental, savage Victorian journalism, the anatomist of his gory age; but plots, wit and warm characterization triumph over particularity, and render him a timeless joy. --Raphael and McLeish

Our Mutual Friend (1866)
Once again, individual kindliness is the remedy for everything. --George Orwell

The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)

Alexander HERZEN (1812-1870) The Online Books Page Isaiah Berlin lecture
a Russian writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism" and one of the main fathers of agrarian populism ... He is held responsible for creating a political climate leading to the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. --Wikipedia

From the Other Shore (1848-1850)

My Past and Thoughts (1868)

Edward LEAR (1812-1888) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation | Academy of American Poets
an English artist, illustrator, author and poet, and is known now mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised. --Wikipedia

Complete Nonsense (1947)

Robert BROWNING (1812-1889) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation | Academy of American Poets
an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. --Wikipedia

Paracelsus (1835)

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)

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)

Andrea Del Sarto (Men and Women 1855)

A Grammarian's Funeral (Men and Women 1855)
A few poems (like The Grammarian's Funeral) put Browning high among 19th century poets; although much of his work is mid-Victorian rubbish, startling, regular outbursts of genuine poetry make it worthwhile. --Raphael and McLeish

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)

Rabbi Ben Ezra (Dramatis Personae 1864)

A Death in the Desert (Dramatis Personae 1864)

Abt Vogler (Dramatis Personae 1864)

Prospice (Dramatis Personae 1864)

The Ring and the Book (1868-1869)

The Inn Album (1875)

Shop (1876)

Ivan GONCHAROV (1812-1891) The Online Books Page post
a Russian novelist best known for his novels A Common Story (1847), Oblomov (1859), and The Precipice (1869). --Wikipedia

The Frigate Pallada (1858)

Oblomov (1859)
...an attack on the lazy landowners who thoughtlessly relied on the labour of others. --Philip Ward

William Makepeace THACKERAY (1811-1863) The Online Books Page post
an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society. --Wikipedia

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) The Online Books Page | Poem Hunter
a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic. --Wikipedia

Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835)

Enamels and Cameos (Emaux et camees, 1852)

Harriet Beecher STOWE (1811-1896) The Online Books Page post
an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) was a depiction of life for African Americans under slavery --Wikipedia

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

Margaret FULLER (1810-1850) The Online Books Page American Transcendentalism Web | Margaret Fuller Bicentennial
an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism. --Wikipedia

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Eugenie de GUERIN (1810-1839) The Online Books Page post
...French writer, was the sister of the poet Maurice de Guérin. ... In her case mysticism assumed a form more strictly religious, and she continued to mourn her brother's loss of his early Catholic faith. --Wikipedia

Journal ("The Green Notebook", 1861)

Alfred de MUSSET (1810-1857) The Online Books Page
a French dramatist, poet, and novelist. Along with his poetry, he is known for writing La Confession d'un enfant du siecle (The Confession of a Child of the Century, autobiographical) from 1836. --Wikipedia

Lorenzaccio (1833)

Poems Poem Hunter

Elizabeth GASKELL (1810-1865) The Online Books Page Mitsuharu Matsuoka fan site
a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. --Wikipedia

Mary Barton (1848)

Mr. Harrison's Confessions (1851)

Cranford (1851-1853)
Life in an early-19th-century town. ... Witty mirror-image of Bronte, Haworth and those uncouth, insufferable moors. --Raphael and McLeish

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

"The Manchester Marriage" (1858)

Crowley Castle (1863)

John BROWN (1810-1882) The Online Books Page
a Scottish physician and essayist. --Wikipedia

Horae Subsecivae (1859, "Leisure Hours")

Edgar Allan POE (1809-1849) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation | Academy of American Poets post
an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story --Wikipedia

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838)
blazed the trail leading to what is now called science fiction. --Clifton Fadiman

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 Fall of the House of Usher (1839)

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)
Poe may not have held his 'tales of rationcination' in the highest esteem, but these stories alone earned him the title of 'the father of detective fiction'. --Raphael and McLeish

The Gold Bug (1843)

The Purloined Letter (1844)

The Cask of Amontillado (1846)

Eureka (1848)

Nikolai GOGOL (1809-1852) The Online Books Page
a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist, novelist and short story writer. Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility --Wikipedia

Dead Souls (1842)
Unfinished, like the maze it depicts, Dead Souls is a satire of desperation in which the lost millions--the serfs of imperial Russia--are 'redeemed' by the scurrilous, picaresque, activities of an archetypal confidence man. --Raphael and McLeish
(Robert A. Maguire translation, 2004) A. S. Byatt review
(Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation, 2004) Timothy C. Westphalen review

The Government Inspector (1842)

The Complete Tales
(Leonard J. Kent translation; 2 vol. 1985)
(Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation, 1999) Gary Saul Morson review

Abraham LINCOLN (1809-1865) The Online Books Page Lincoln Studies Center | The Abraham Lincoln Association | The Papers of Abraham Lincoln post
the 16th President of the United States ... Lincoln led the United States through its greatest constitutional, military, and moral crisis—the American Civil War --Wikipedia

Speech on the Mexican War (January 12, 1848)

Speech at Peoria, Illinois (October 6, 1854) Joseph R. Fornieri review | Lucas Morel review

Speech at Springfield, Illinois (June 26, 1857)

Address at Cooper Institute (February 27, 1860) Allen C. Guelzo review

Political Debates...in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois (1860, with Stephen A. Douglas, 1813-1861) Diana Schaub review essay

First Inaugural Address (1861)

Annual Message to Congress (December 3, 1861)

The Gettysburg Address (1863) Peter Norvig parody
I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes. --Edward Everett

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

also

Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (September 30, 1859) Teaching American History

Pierre-Joseph PROUDHON (1809-1865) The Online Books Page | Marxists Internet Archive
a French politician, the founder of Mutualist philosophy, an economist and a libertarian socialist. He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist and is among its most influential theorists. --Wikipedia

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 A. Schumpeter

Charles DARWIN (1809-1882) The Online Books Page post
an English naturalist and geologist,[1] best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors --Wikipedia
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

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

On the Origin of Species (1859, 6th Ed. 1882)
Mr. Darwin's theory need not then to be atheistical, be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill. --John Henry Newman
It is technically accessible to any intelligent reader. It is a genuinely participatory experience. --Thomas C. Schnelling

The Descent of Man (1871) Sterf
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
The deep-down nastiness of the Descent is eugenic: the idea that the 'survival of the fittest' should be applied to human beings. --Benjamin Wiker

Autobiography (1887)
No man can pretend to know Darwin who does not know his autobiography. --Loren Eiseley

also

Letters Darwin Correspondence Project

Alexander William KINGLAKE (1809-1891) The Online Books Page
He was called to the Bar in 1837, and built up a thriving legal practice, which in 1856 he abandoned in order to devote himself to literature and public life. --Wikipedia

Eothen; or Traces of travel brought home from the East (1844)
Kinglake set down his descriptions with a delightful charm and freshness, though some of his comments on Moslem customs were too appreciative, and his references to the Holy Land too unconventional for contemporary prejudices. --J. A. Hammerton

Alfred TENNYSON (1809-1892, 1st Baron Tennyson: "Lord Tennyson") The Online Books Page
was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. --Wikipedia

Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights (1833)

Morte d’Arthur (Poems 1842)

Sir Galahad (Poems 1842)

Locksley Hall (Poems 1842)

The Lotus Eaters (Poems 1842)

Ulysses (Poems 1842)

The Princess (1847)

In Memoriam (1850)

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

Flowers in the Crannied Wall (1869)

Guinevere (1877)

The Revenge (1878)

To Virgil (1882)

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886)

Crossing the Bar (1889)

Oliver Wendell HOLMES, Sr. (1809-1894) The Online Books Page
an American physician, poet, professor, lecturer, and author. Regarded by his peers as one of the best writers of the 19th century, he is considered a member of the Fireside Poets. --Wikipedia

Old Ironsides (1830)

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1857)

The Chambered Nautilus (1858)

Gerard de NERVAL (1808-1858) The Online Books Page
the nom-de-plume of the French writer, poet, essayist and translator Gerard Labrunie, one of the most essentially Romantic French poets. --Wikipedia

Sylvie (1853)

The Chimeras (Les Chimeres, from Les Filles du feu, 1854) Daniel Mark Epstein translation

Aurelia (Aurelia; ou, Le Reve et la vie, 1855)

Harriet Taylor MILL (1807-1858) The Online Books Page Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
a philosopher and women's rights advocate. Her second husband was John Stuart Mill --Wikipedia

The Enfranchisement of Women (The Westminster Review, July 1851)

Louis AGASSIZ (1807-1873) The Online Books Page James S. Aber fan site Brenda Wineapple essay
a Swiss-born American biologist, geologist, physician, and a prominent innovator in the study of Earth's natural history. --Wikipedia
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

Studies on Glaciers (1840)

Henry Wadsworth LONGFELLOW (1807-1882) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation | Academy of American Poets Tim Bartel essay
an American poet and educator ... . was one of the five Fireside Poets. --Wikipedia

Selected Poems (1988) John Derbyshire review

John Greenleaf WHITTIER (1807-1892) The Online Books Page post
an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. --Wikipedia

Randolph of Roanoke (1846)

The Barefoot Boy (1855)

The Pipes at Lucknow (Home ballads and poems, 1861)

Barbara Frietchie (1863)

Barclay of Ury (The Pennsylvania pilgrim,: and other poems, 1872)

John Stuart MILL (1806-1873) The Online Books Page Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy post
an English philosopher, political economist and civil servant. He was an influential contributor to social theory, political theory and political economy. --Wikipedia

Review of Tocqueville's Democracy in America (London Review, October 1835)

Bentham (1838)

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

Principles of Political Economy (1848)
Characteristically clear, fair and liberal. --Raphael and McLeish
John Stuart Mill | By a mighty effort of will, | Overcame his natural bonhomie | and wrote Principles of Political Economy. --Edmund Clerihew Bentley

On Liberty (1859) 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
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
it combined a position I found congenial, the careful marshalling of reasons and also great rhetorical force--hence the ease of quoting. --Robert Nozick

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

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 A. Schumpeter
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
Utilitarianism 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
Valiant, sylish defense of Bentham's celebrated 'greatest happiness' principle. --Raphael and McLeish
If we scratch down far enough in his argument, it becomes apparent that Mill's real belief was not in the principle of utility, but in himself and in his own direction of the moral life of human beings to achieve what he considered the greatest good for the greatest number. --Benjamin Wiker

Inaugural Address at St. Andrews (1867)

Autobiography (1873)

The Subjection of Women (1873)
Argues strongly that both sexes have lost out because of the political and legal subjection of women. --Raphael and McLeish

Nature (1874)

George FITZHUGH (1806-1881) The Online Books Page
an American social theorist who published racial and slavery-based sociological theories in the antebellum era. --Wikipedia

Sociology for the South, or, The Failure of Free Society (1855)

Alexis de TOCQUEVILLE (1805-1859) The Online Books Page post
a French political thinker and historian --Wikipedia

Journey to America (1831-1832, Oeuvres Completes, Vol. 1; George Lawrence translation, 1960)

Letter to Eugene Stoffels (Feb. 21, 1835)

Democracy in America (De la democratie en Amerique, 1835-40)
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
Could a 19th-century aristocratic moralist provide a guide to the way modern societies generate their own forms of discontent, with the operations of public opinion directing exaggerated attention to minor problems, and entirely veiling greater ones? It’s not such an absurd idea. --David A. Bell
From being widely read and quoted, by the 1870s it had become a text only occasionally studied and footnoted. --Robert Nisbet
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
- (Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop translation, 2000) Ken Masugi review

Hans Christian ANDERSEN (1805-1875) The Online Books Page Norman Berdichevsky essay | Kathryn Hughes review | Alexandra Mullen review
a Danish author and poet. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. --Wikipedia

Fairy Tales (Eventyr, 1835-1837)
Little Hans Christian Andersen must have been asleep when his nurse finished her bedtime stories with 'And they lived happily ever after'. By the close of some of the more famous of Andersen's tales, the characters are lucky to be alive, let alone happy. --Michael Dirda

Thomas WADE (1805-1875) The Online Books Page | Poem Hunter | Project Bartleby | Internet Archive
an English poet and dramatist. --Wikipedia

Poems (in The Poems and Plays, 1997)

Nathaniel HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) The Online Books Page post
an American novelist and short story writer. --Wikipedia

My Kinsman, Major Molineux (The Token and Atlantic Souvenir 1832)

The Minister's Black Veil (Twice-Told Tales, 1837)
[Twice-Told Tales] Thirty-nine stories, some mannered and boring, but the best--'The Ambitious Guest' and 'Howe's Masquerade'--foreshadowing The Scarlet Letter in their preoccupation with guilt and secrecy and in their obsession with the effects of New England Puritanism. --Raphael and McLeish

Young Goodman Brown (Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846, 1854)

Rappaccini's Daughter (Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846, 1854)

The Birthmark (Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846, 1854)

The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Hester Prynne's search for freedom from the prison of society is the archetypal American story--and it ends in the same way, with a retreat, or flight, into the wilderness where all men are, or seem to be, free. --Raphael and McLeish

The Marble Faun (1860) James Russell Lowell review

American Notebooks (edited by Sophia Hawthorne, 1883)

Ludwig FEUERBACH (1804-1872) The Online Books Page
a German philosopher and anthropologist --Wikipedia
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 (Das Wesen des Christentums, 1841)
In refined and sublimated thought and diction it aims at exhibiting religion as a transfiguration of the highest conception of the human mind concerning God. --J. A. Hammerton

Eduard MORIKE (1804-1875) The Online Books Page
a German Romantic poet. --Wikipedia

Mozart on His Way to Prague (Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag, 1855)

Selected Poems (1972) Charles L. Cingolani translation

George SAND (1804-1876) The Online Books Page post
Amantine (also "Amandine") Lucile Aurore Dupin, best known by her pseudonym George Sand, was a French novelist and memoirist. --Wikipedia

The Haunted Pool (La Mare au diable 1890)

Thomas Lovell BEDDOES (1803-1849) The Online Books Page Phantom-Wooer fan site
an English poet, dramatist and physician. --Wikipedia

Death's Jest Book (1850)

Poems (1851)

Hector BERLIOZ (1803-1864) The Online Books Page Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin fan site
a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). --Wikipedia

Memoirs (David Cairns translation 1969; Memoires 1870)
For amateurs of the 1840s artistic scene, a book not to be missed. --Raphael and McLeish
- (David Cairns revised translation 2002) Evan Hause review
Determined to avoid a kiss-and-tell confession, Berlioz refracted his life through his art. --James Marcus

Prosper MERIMEE (1803-1870) The Online Books Page
a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist, and short story writer. He is perhaps best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis of Bizet's opera Carmen. --Wikipedia

Short Stories (1909 George Burnham Ives translation)
In a general sense, his overarching theme is the power of the repressed. That which we refuse to honor or acknowledge--dark forces within ourselves, our lot in life, our primitive duty--will ultimately irrupt with overwhelming and destructive fury. --Michael Dirda

Orestes BROWNSON (1803-1876) The Online Books Page | History Tools | Terrence Berres Orestes Brownson Society | Catholic Encyclopedia | Lynn Gordon Hughes and David Voelker biography | Krystyna Grocholski biography | Stan Klos biography | Cambridge History of English and American Literature | Perspectives in American Literature | U Notre Dame Archives Eric Scheske essay Part I, Part II, Part III | Russell Shaw essay | Peter Augustine Lawler interview | Peter Augustine Lawler essay | Edward Power interview | Charles L. Glenn review | Edward Day essay | Henry Steele Commager review
a New England intellectual and activist, preacher, labor organizer, and noted Catholic convert and writer. --Wikipedia

The Laboring Classes (1840)

The American Republic: Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny (1865)

George BORROW (1803-1881) The Online Books Page
an English author who wrote novels and travelogues based on his experiences traveling around Europe. --Wikipedia

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) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation | Academy of American Poets Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | Jone Johnson Lewis fan site post
an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. --Wikipedia

Letter to Thomas Carlyle (October 7, 1835)

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 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)

Essays (Essays: First Series 1841; Essays: Second Series 1844) Transcendentalists

New England Reformers (1844)

Give All to Love (1846)

The Rhodora (Poems 1847)

Representative Men (1849)

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)

Memory (from 'The Natural History of the Intellect', lectures at Harvard College 1870-1871)

Poetry and Imagination (1872; Letters and Social Aims 1883)

Journals [1819-1874]

Threnody (Early Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson 1899)

Poems (1899)

Education (The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson 1904, edited by Edward Emerson) American Transcendentalism Web

The Portable Emerson (anthology 1946)

but not

Success
One of the most enduring misattributions of a work to Emerson --The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society

Alexandre DUMAS (1802-1870) The Online Books Page | Literature Network:
also known as Alexandre Dumas, pere, a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure. --Wikipedia

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 HUGO (1802-1885) The Online Books Page post
a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. --Wikipedia

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831)
traces the adventures of the gipsy dancer Esmeralda in 15th-century Paris, overshadowed by the great cathedral of Our Lady. --Philip Ward

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 (La Fin de Satan, 1886)

God (Dieu, 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) The Online Books Page Benedict XVI homily post
an important figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. ... In 1845 Newman left the Church of England and was received into the Roman Catholic Church where he was eventually granted the rank of cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. --Wikipedia

Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845)

Difficulties of Anglicans (1850)

The Idea of a University (1852 and 1858)

Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864, revised 1865)

The Dream of Gerontius (1865)

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870)

/\ Early 19th Century

\/ 1751-1800 | 1826-1850 /\

Revised June 16, 2014.

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