Historyczna
May Agnes Fleming
This story is told during the great plague of London. A fantastic and historical tale begins with the story of Sir Norman Kingsley about the mystical La Masque, he ends up visiting her, and soon certain visions come to life in her presence. But how does a woman, supposedly dead, come to life and how can such a dead man suddenly disappear?
George Eliot
If you had to choose between the love of a lifetime and your relationship with your family, who would you pick? In The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, the author draws on her own experiences when writing the tale of the complicated relationship between a young woman Maggie and her brother Tom Tulliver during a time when women had limited choices. Maggies often tormented battle to do her duty and belong on the one hand, and to be herself, wild and natural on the other, propels her from one crisis to another. As the Tulliver fortunes decline and fall, the rift between Maggie and her family becomes almost irreconcilable. But Maggies biggest mistake of all is to fall in love with Stephen Guest who is engaged to another woman. This novel is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age.
Robert Barr
First published in 1896 and considered one of Robert Barrs best works, this historical novel set in London at the beginning of the 20th century and centering on an industrial strike and a love triangle. The men in Monkton and Hopes factory strike. Sartwell, their manager, refuses to compromise with them, but discusses the situation with Marsten, one of their number, who clings to his own order, at the same time that he avows his love for Sartwells daughter Edna. Sartwell forbids him to speak to her. The strike is crushed, Marsten is dismissed, and becomes secretary to the Labor Union. He sees Edna several times, she becomes interested in him, and her father sends her away to school... A great read, The Mutable Many is thoroughly recommended for inclusion on the bookshelf of any home and for lovers of historical novels.
H. Rider Haggard
In this story, readers are introduced to Leonard Outram, a penniless British adventurer in his pocket who is seeking wealth in distant lands, having lost his family lands and estates. He is involved in the rescue of a young Portuguese woman from the largest slave camp in Africa. As a result, the main character discovered a lost race. He will not be easy, because he will face their God.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Decades later after Uncles Dream, Dostoevsky wrote The Permanent Husband, also known as The Eternal Husband (1890). It is one of Dostoevskys most perfect works. Classical in form, it presents his most profound exploration of mimetic rivalry and the duality of human consciousness. A love-affair drama that is both tragedy and comedy, that follows complicated relationships, remarriages, and unrequited love. Told from the point of view of a rich and idle man who is confronted by a younger rival, the husband of his former, and now deceased, mistress, the story portrays the interchanging hatred and love of the two men. Some critics have ranked this novella among Dostoyevskys best works because of its style and structure. Alfred Bem has called it one of the most complete works by Dostoyevsky in regards to its composition and development.
Henry James
Isabel, the main character of the story, knows the charm of marriage with a worthless person. Her fate the confluence of fatal circumstances. Being a dowry and finding herself in Europe, she refuses to quite worthy applicants for a hand, and having received a fortune, she links life with the rogue Osmond, who married her only to provide a bastard daughter, Pansy, born of a courtesan, a decent existence. Illusions are crumbling, there is no hope for happiness, but Isabelle, with stoic courage, endures all the misfortunes that have fallen to her lot.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
The Possessed (also known in English as The Devils and The Demons) is the greatest novel ever written about the politics of revolution. It is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large scale tragedy. Published in 1871, Fyodor Dostoevskys novel foretold with uncanny prescience events that would occur almost fifty years later during the Bolshevik Revolution and the Communist tyranny that followed. Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russians in 1869, Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a novel-pamphlet in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land. The novels relevance, however, is not limited to Russia and its revolution. With its cast of idealistic murderers and suicides, seductive madmen and glamorous fanatics, The Possessed is a novel for our time as well.
The Real Thing and Other Tales
Henry James
The main character, an aspiring artist, hires a faded noble couple, Monarchs, as models after they have lost most of their money and need to find some kind of work. They are real in the sense that they are beautifully of the aristocratic type, but they turn out to be inappropriate for the artists work. The artist must finally get rid of the monarchs, especially after his friend and colleague, artist Jack Hawley, criticized the work in which monarchs are represented.