- The Unz Review

These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.

Email Comment Ignore Commenter Follow Commenter

The Voyage of the Beagle

Charles Darwin • 1839 • 206,000 Words

I have stated in the preface to the first Edition of this work, and in the Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, that it was in consequence of a wish expressed by Captain Fitz Roy, of having some scientific person on board, accompanied by an offer from him of giving up part of his... Read More

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

Containing a Faithful Account of the Fortunes, Misfortunes, Uprisings, Downfallings and Complete Career of the...

Charles Dickens • 1839 • 329,000 Words

This story was begun, within a few months after the publication of the completed “Pickwick Papers.” There were, then, a good many cheap Yorkshire schools in existence. There are very few now. Of the monstrous neglect of education in England, and the disregard of it by the State as a means of forming good or... Read More

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Honore de Balzac • 1838 • 195,000 Words

To His Highness Prince Alfonso Serafino di Porcia. Allow me to place your name at the beginning of an essentially Parisian work, thought out in your house during these latter days. Is it not natural that I should offer you the flowers of rhetoric that blossomed in your garden, watered with the regrets I suffered... Read More

Oliver Twist

or, The Parish Boy's Progress

Charles Dickens • 1838 • 162,000 Words

Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date... Read More

The Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush

William Makepeace Thackeray • 1837 • 60,000 Words

I was born in the year one, of the present or Christian hera, and am, in consquints, seven-and-thirty years old. My mamma called me Charles James Harrington Fitzroy Yellowplush, in compliment to several noble families, and to a sellybrated coachmin whom she knew, who wore a yellow livry, and drove the Lord Mayor of London.... Read More

The French Revolution

A History

Thomas Carlyle • 1837 • 293,000 Words

President Henault, remarking on royal Surnames of Honour how difficult it often is to ascertain not only why, but even when, they were conferred, takes occasion in his sleek official way, to make a philosophical reflection. 'The Surname of Bien-aime (Well-beloved),' says he, 'which Louis XV. bears, will not leave posterity in the same doubt.... Read More

Droll Stories

Collected from the Abbeys of Touraine

Honore de Balzac • 1837 • 171,000 Words

When, in March, 1832, the first volume of the now famous Contes Drolatiques was published by Gosselin of Paris, Balzac, in a short preface, written in the publisher’s name, replied to those attacks which he anticipated certain critics would make upon his hardy experiment. He claimed for his book the protection of all those to... Read More

The Pickwick Papers

Charles Dickens • 1837 • 297,000 Words

The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of... Read More

Henrietta Temple

A Love Story

Benjamin Disraeli • 1837 • 142,000 Words

THE family of Armine entered England with William the Norman. Ralph d’Armyn was standard-bearer of the Conqueror, and shared prodigally in the plunder, as appears by Doomsday Book. At the time of the general survey the family of Ermyn, or Armyn, possessed numerous manors in Nottinghamshire, and several in the shire of Lincoln. William D’Armyn,... Read More

Venetia

Benjamin Disraeli • 1837 • 164,000 Words

'Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child?' 'The child of love, though born in bitterness And nurtured in convulsion.' TO LORD LYNDHURST In happier hours, when I first mentioned to you the idea of this Work, it was my intention, while inscribing it with your name, to have entered into some details as... Read More

Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk

Of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal

Maria Monk • 1837 • 102,000 Words

This volume embraces not only my "Awful Disclosures," but a continuation of my Narrative, giving an account of events after my escape from the Nunnery, and of my return to Montreal to procure a legal investigation of my charges. It also [illegible] all the testimony that has been published against me, or every description, as... Read More

Twice-Told Tales

Nathaniel Hawthorne • 1837 • 147,000 Words

There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution. James II., the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and... Read More

Père Goriot

Honore de Balzac • 1835 • 103,000 Words

Mme. Vauquer (nee de Conflans) is an elderly person, who for the past forty years has kept a lodging-house in the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, in the district that lies between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. Her house (known in the neighborhood as the Maison Vauquer) receives men and women, old and young, and no... Read More

The Lily of the Valley

Honore de Balzac • 1835 • 102,000 Words

Felix de Vandenesse to Madame la Comtesse Natalie de Manerville: I yield to your wishes. It is the privilege of the women whom we love more than they love us to make the men who love them ignore the ordinary rules of common-sense. To smooth the frown upon their brow, to soften the pout upon... Read More

The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Honore de Balzac • 1835 • 28,000 Words

One of those sights in which most horror is to be encountered is, surely, the general aspect of the Parisian populace—a people fearful to behold, gaunt, yellow, tawny. Is not Paris a vast field in perpetual turmoil from a storm of interests beneath which are whirled along a crop of human beings, who are, more... Read More

The Monikins

James Fenimore Cooper • 1835 • 143,000 Words

It is not improbable that some of those who read this book, may feel a wish to know in what manner I became possessed of the manuscript. Such a desire is too just and natural to be thwarted, and the tale shall be told as briefly as possible. During the summer of 1828, while travelling... Read More

The Infernal Marriage

Benjamin Disraeli • 1834 • 20,000 Words

IT WAS clearly a runaway match—never indeed was such a sublime elopement. The four horses were coal-black, with blood-red manes and tails; and they were shod with rubies. They were harnessed to a basaltic car by a single rein of flame. Waving his double-pronged trident in the air, the god struck the blue breast of... Read More

Seraphita

Honore de Balzac • 1834 • 51,000 Words

To Madame Eveline de Hanska, nee Comtesse Rzewuska. Madame,—Here is the work which you asked of me. I am happy, in thus dedicating it, to offer you a proof of the respectful affection you allow me to bear you. If I am reproached for impotence in this attempt to draw from the depths of mysticism... Read More

Helen

Maria Edgeworth • 1834 • 180,000 Words

“There is Helen in the lime-walk,” said Mrs. Collingwood to her husband, as she looked out of the window. The slight figure of a young person in deep mourning appeared between the trees,—“How slowly she walks! She looks very unhappy!” “Yes,” said Mr. Collingwood, with a sigh, “she is young to know sorrow, and to... Read More

Ferragus, Chief of the Dévorants

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Honore de Balzac • 1833 • 45,000 Words

To Hector Berlioz. Thirteen men were banded together in Paris under the Empire, all imbued with one and the same sentiment, all gifted with sufficient energy to be faithful to the same thought, with sufficient honor among themselves never to betray one another even if their interests clashed; and sufficiently wily and politic to conceal... Read More

Alroy

The Prince of the Captivity

Benjamin Disraeli • 1833 • 86,000 Words

Being at Jerusalem in the year 1831, and visiting the traditionary tombs of the Kings of Israel, my thoughts recurred to a personage whose marvellous career had, even in boyhood, attracted my attention, as one fraught with the richest materials of poetic fiction. And I then commenced these pages that should commemorate the name of... Read More

Eugénie Grandet

Honore de Balzac • 1833 • 65,000 Words

There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger... Read More

The Rise of Iskander

Benjamin Disraeli • 1833 • 26,000 Words

The sun had set behind the mountains, and the rich plain of Athens was suffused with the violet glow of a Grecian eye. A light breeze rose; the olive-groves awoke from their noonday trance, and rustled with returning animation, and the pennons of the Turkish squadron, that lay at anchor in the harbour of PirÃ¦us,... Read More

The Magic Skin

Honore de Balzac • 1831 • 98,000 Words

Towards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered the Palais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the law which protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. He mounted the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished by the number 36, without too much deliberation. “Your hat,... Read More

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood

Victor Hugo • 1831 • 184,000 Words

A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the following word, engraved by hand upon the wall:— These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar... Read More

Sartor Resartus

The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh

Thomas Carlyle • 1831 • 80,000 Words

Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat,... Read More

The Young Duke

Benjamin Disraeli • 1831 • 112,000 Words

GEORGE AUGUSTUS FREDERICK, DUKE OF ST. JAMES, completed his twenty-first year, an event which created almost as great a sensation among the aristocracy of England as the Norman Conquest. A minority of twenty years had converted a family always amongst the wealthiest of Great Britain into one of the richest in Europe. The Duke of... Read More

The Water-Witch

or, The Skimmer of the Seas - A Tale

James Fenimore Cooper • 1830 • 157,000 Words

Christendom is gradually extricating itself from the ignorance, ferocity, and crimes of the middle ages. It is no longer subject of boast, that the hand which wields the sword, never held a pen, and men have long since ceased to be ashamed of knowledge. The multiplied means of imparting principles and facts, and a more... Read More

The Red and the Black

A Chronicle of 1830

Stendhal • 1830 • 195,000 Words

Some slight sketch of the life and character of Stendhal is particularly necessary to an understanding of Le Rouge et Le Noir (The Red and the Black) not so much as being the formal stuffing of which introductions are made, but because the book as a book stands in the most intimate relation to the... Read More

← Decade 1820s Decade 1840s →