Classic Fiction - Satire and Social Commentary

• Author(s): Jonathan Swift • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureGulliver's Travels, first published in 1726, was an immediate success and was read 'from the Cabinet - council to the Nursery' (Gay). It c...

• Author(s): Jane Austen • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureIn the delightful social comedy of Pride and Prejudice (1813) Jane Austen delicately handles the problem of love and money in marriage where,...

• Author(s): Oscar Wilde • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureThe Importance of Being Earnest is a farcical comedy in three Acts. The protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social...

• Author(s): Joseph Conrad • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureHeart of Darkness is the finest of all Conrad's tales, showing him at the height of his powers as a writer of great vividness, intensity, a...

• Author(s): Charles Dickens • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English Literature“Let us strike the keynote, Coketown, before pursuing our tune... It was a town of machines and tall chimneys, out of which interminable ...

• Author(s): F. Scott Fitzgerald • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureThe Great Gatsby is generally considered to be the finest novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Written in an easy style, without com...

• Author(s): Virginia Woolf • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureIt is a fantasy novel published in 1928. It traces the career of the androgynous Orlando through four centuries from the late sixteenth ce...

• Author(s): Voltaire • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureCandide, a privileged and sheltered young man, is under the folly of optimism and believes he lives in the ‘best of all possible worlds’ as his ...

• Author(s): George Bernard Shaw • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureMan and Superman, a four-Act drama, was written in 1903 as a response to those who had questioned Shaw as to why he had never written...

• Author(s): Charles Dickens • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureOliver Twist, Dickens's critique of the harsh Poor Law of 1834, and a grim picture of the sordid reality the London underworld of Dickens...

• Author(s): Jane Austen • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureNorthanger Abbey, written during the same period as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, represents Jane Austen's genius at its fre...

• Author(s): Gustave Flaubert • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureOnce considered scandalizingly immoral, Flaubert’s exquisite debut novel unsparingly depicts a woman’s gradual corruption and the human ...

• Author(s): Thomas Hardy • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureThe Mayor of Casterbridge displays the influence of Hardy's upbringing, rural background, and architectural studies. His characters are prim...

• Author(s): Ben Jonson • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureVolpone (or The Fox) is a comedy in five acts, performed about 1605–1606 and published in 1607, drawing on elements of city comedy and beast f...

• Author(s): Thomas Hardy • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureTess of the D’Urbervilles, a brilliant tale of seduction, love, betrayal, and murder, is generally regarded as Thomas Hardy’s finest novel. ...

• Author(s): Jonathan Swift • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureA Tale of a Tub, Jonathan Swift’s first major and his most masterly work. It presents a satire of religious excess. When it was written, p...

• Author(s): William M. Thackeray • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English Literature"The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face." Set against the backdrop of the Napoleo...

• Author(s): Henry Fielding • Publisher: Atlantic • Publisher Imprint: Peacock • Subject: English LiteratureJoseph Andrews is Fielding's first novel, and although directed against Samuel Richardson's Pamela which was a great success, it is far fr...