Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones”

Seldom does one reach the end of a 900-page novel and wish it had been longer, but that was my experience on first reading Henry Fielding’s classic from the early days of the novel, officially entitled The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, though generally known simply as Tom Jones. The book, originally published in 1749, was what… Continue reading Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones”

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Louise Erdrich’s “The Night Watchman”

One of the most important writers of what’s generally considered the “second wave” of the Native American Renaissance, Louise Erdrich has been one of my favorite writers for nearly forty years. Her first novel, Love Medicine, was an instant classic, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1984—the only first novel ever to win that award.… Continue reading Louise Erdrich’s “The Night Watchman”

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George Eliot’s “Middlemarch”

It seems that the reputation of Mary Ann Evans, aka George Eliot (since what Victorian publisher would accept a novel by someone with a woman’s name?), just keeps growing stronger and stronger as time goes by. Already a major novelist in her own time, with acclaimed novels like Silas Marner (1861), Daniel Deronda (1876), Adam Bede (1859), and The Mill on the Floss (1860),… Continue reading George Eliot’s “Middlemarch”

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