As in her other novels, Eliot spends much introductory time on her main characters, many minor characters and their histories. It is not until halfway through the story that all the elements start to fall together. At this point, The Mill on the Floss is hard to put down.

Published in July 1814, Mansfield Park is the story of Fanny Price who has been raised by her wealthy aunt and uncle as charity to her mother who married poorly. Treated as inferior by everyone except her cousin Edmund, Fanny’s gratitude toward Edmund secretly grows into love. As suitors and other lovers come into the picture, the plot thickens and emotions run high in true Austen style.

The first novel by Fanny Fern, otherwise known as Sara Payson Willis, is a semi-autobiographical tale of a talented writer who loses her husband and is forced to support herself and two young children in the mid-1800s. Fern writes with biting social commentary on the subject of traditional assumptions of a woman’s place in society.

Much shorter than Middlemarch, Silas Marner ironically takes a bit longer for the reader to become involved with the story. It starts almost too simply: Silas Marner, a weaver living in a religious community, is unjustly accused of theft, expelled, and becomes a recluse in another small village called Raveloe.

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Legends of Vancouver was originally published around 1910 as a series of newspaper articles based on stories related by Pauline Johnson’s friend, Chief Joe Capilano of the Squamish people. It is the first collection of native legends retold by a native artist and has become a classic of Canadian literature.

My Ántonia is a story of many people over a long period of time. Many come and go, some stay throughout the narrative, many softly pass into the background and are not spoken of again. While not the tightly structured narrative that was O Pioneers!, My Ántonia is a quiet story that finds its power through simplicity.

The Song of the Lark may be downloaded for free from our ebook catalog.
The Song of the Lark was Cather’s third novel. Written between O Pioneers! and My Antonia, it is very different from those novels for which Cather is better known. The story is set among sand hills and canyons, big crowded cities and [...]