Historyczna
Henry James
At the reception in the rich manor there are not the first youth mister and also not a young lady anymore. Both belong to the same circle of birth, but the financial affairs of a man are in somewhat better condition. It all seems to him that he is meant for something great and terrible that will destroy his own life and the lives of loved ones like a sudden fit of madness or, yes, how many anything can be options. It is like seeing yourself as a thicket in which the beast is hiding for the time being.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A group of people is a powerful mixture of competing ambitions, and its idealism finds little satisfaction in agriculture. Instead of changing the world, Blithedale community members individually follow selfish paths that ultimately lead to tragedy. Hawthornes tale simultaneously mourns and saturates a rural idyll, not unlike the history of America in the 19th century as a whole.
Henry James
The action revolves around three characters: a young and beautiful maiden who travels around America with fiery speeches about the importance of women; her mentor, a lonely and cold lady who despises the whole male race. Different ideals are presented by the rivalry of Olive Chancellor and her cousin Basel Ransom for influencing the young girl Vera Tarrant, who has a strong oratorical gift. The social plan of this novel is concluded in the struggle of the conservative views of the southerner Ransom with the irreconcilable supporter and active participant in the movement for womens emancipation. Olive found in her young protege a strong instrument of influencing public opinion through her oratorical abilities.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel set in 19th century of Russia that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia. The plot of the novel revolves around the murder of perhaps one of the most despicable characters ever created, Fyodor Karamazov, and the investigation and trial that follows, which swirl around the role played by his three sons: the impulsive and sensual Dmitri or Mitya, the coldly rational Ivan and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Dostoyevsky uses a drama of parricide of Shakespearean proportions and family rivalry to examine his own contradictions and struggles between faith and reason, love and hate, duty and abandon. Frequently lurid, nightmarish, always brilliant, the novel plunges the reader into a sordid love triangle, a pathological obsession, and a gripping courtroom drama.
Honoré de Balzac
Two works of 1829 brought Balzac to the brink of success. Les Chouans, the first novel he felt enough confidence about to have published under his own name, is a historical novel about the Breton peasants called Chouans who took part in a royalist insurrection against Revolutionary France in 1799 that occurred in the region between Brittany and Nantes and Balzac places his story in this accurate historic contest. Balzac is one of Frances greatest storytellers and this particular thriller is one of his most spine-tingling ones. In it, an aristocrat, Marie de Verneuil, is sent by Joseph Fouché, the terrible minister of police to seduce and capture their leader, the Marquis de Montauran, known as the Guy (le Gars). She must be helped by a skillful, ambitious and unscrupulous policeman, Corentin. But Marie falls in love with her target...
Leo Tolstoy
The main character of the story, Dmitry Olenin, is close to the author both in spiritual experience and in moral aspirations. Like Tolstoy, he finds himself in the Caucasus in an attempt to start a new life, "in which there will be no more mistakes, there will be no remorse, and probably there will be only happiness." But instead of imagining paintings on the way to the Caucasus in the spirit of Russian romantic literature, the hero of the story had to see real life and feel like a stranger in a world untouched by civilization.
Honoré de Balzac
The Country Doctor (Le Médecin de Campagne), by Honoré de Balzac, belongs to the series known as Scenes from Country Life; a part of his great cycle of fiction, The Comedy of Human Life. It is one of Balzacs noblest pieces of fiction, presenting beautiful traits of human nature with sympathy and power. The scene is laid in a village near Grenoble in France, and the story begins with the year 1829. Doctor Benassis is the title character of this novel. He is a compassionate and conscientious physician who ministers to the psychological and spiritual as well as physical needs of the villagers among whom he has chosen to practice medicine. A chance visitor is enchanted with the small, exceedingly well-run village and intrigued by the unparalleled popularity of Doctor Benassis. Slowly he learns the history, not only of the village but of the man himself, including why he buried himself in such a remote area.
W.B. Maxwell
1913. The Devils Garden is a popular classic work by W. B. Maxwell. The main character in this story is William Dale who is Postmaster of Rodhaven. He is introduced as an honest peasant of uncompromising temper, whose rough nature is ever softened by his pretty wife Mavis. Dales evening in London is transformed into a catastrophe when he learns a past secret about Mavis that threatens his marriage. Confronted with this secret, Will and Mavis struggle to make their marriage work and become successful. Ironically, Dale is eventually confronted by the same scenario. This work, described as a study of elemental passion and mystery, excited wide discussion and was attacked in many quarters for the daring of its theme, obsession and adultery.