Latest posts
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The Island of Doctor Moreau: The Horror of Playing God
A scientist surgically tortures animals into men on a remote island. On Doctor Moreau — Wells’s darkest novel about the horror of remaking life.
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The Invisible Man: Power Without Consequence
What if no one could see you? On The Invisible Man — Wells’s study of power without consequence, and the oldest question in ethics.
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The Time Machine: The First Journey Into Deep Time
No one had travelled in time like this. On The Time Machine — the birth of the genre, a savage parable of class, and the first look at the end of the world.
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A Study in Scarlet: The First Sherlock Holmes
A wounded army doctor needs cheap lodgings, and meets an odd flatmate. On A Study in Scarlet — where Sherlock Holmes, fully formed, first appears.
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The Moonstone: The First Detective Novel
T. S. Eliot called it the first and best English detective novel. On The Moonstone — the book that invented the machinery every mystery has used since.
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Silas Marner: The Miser Redeemed
A lonely miser loses his gold and finds a child in its place. On Silas Marner — Eliot’s gentlest fable, and the best place to begin with her.
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The Mill on the Floss: George Eliot’s Most Personal Novel
Before Middlemarch, Eliot wrote the book closest to her heart. On The Mill on the Floss and Maggie Tulliver — a clever girl in a world with no room for one.
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The Secret Agent: The First Terrorist Novel
A bomb plot, a shabby double agent, café revolutionaries who mostly talk. On The Secret Agent — Conrad’s 1907 novel that reads like this morning’s news.
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Nostromo: Conrad’s Epic of Silver and Power
Many call it his true masterpiece. On Nostromo, Conrad’s epic of a silver mine that corrupts everyone it touches — and the modern story of money and power.
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The Art of the Glimpse: Poe, Chekhov, and the Short Story
The novel shows a whole life; the story shows one lit window in passing. On Poe and Chekhov — the two men who invented the short story, twice.