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A wonderful book, which is not without reason refers to the masterpieces of English classical literature, and which is read in one breath. The novel is set in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, although global historical events are described only from the point of view of the tragedy of a little man, and tells about ten years of the life of two friends, from the moment they graduate from boarding school to adulthood. But the idea of the book is much broader, and before us is a portrait of an entire epoch, a picture of the ordinary everyday life of a jaded English society. Thackeray sarcastically calls this life a farce, a fair that is overflowing with vanity, vanity, selfishness and hypocrisy, where everything is bought and sold. Money rules everything in this society. The love of relatives for each other is directly proportional to the annual income of the "adored" aunt or "dear" daddy and the probability of becoming an heir. If you have money, you have friends, patrons, and influence, but as soon as you lose your wealth, you immediately lose your place at the fair and you are forgotten, like old Sedley. And for the sake of money, the fair participants rub themselves into trust, intrigue, fool and play. Aristocracy or bourgeoisie, gentlemen or servants, it does not matter, calculation, the desire for wealth and position in society is the only driving force for everyone.  Definitely, "Vanity Fair" is a great novel that cannot leave anyone indifferent. I read it with great pleasure.

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Thackeray's work is characterized by realism in depicting the life of English society, of which he was a contemporary. At that time, novels were written about the ideal hero and his life. In the novel "Vanity Fair", the author shows unscrupulous, selfish, greedy people, against which there is a desire to be cleaner and better, which the writer tried to do. The novel is written with elements of satire, it depicts the vices of people in the most unsightly way.

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The novel is sets in England at the beginning of the XIX century, when the whole of Europe opposes the aggressive plans of Napoleon Bonaparte. However, life goes on as before: people strive to get rich, get a new rank, get a family nest.
It is at this time that Emilia Sedley and Rebecca Sharp end their stay at the boarding house and safely find their long-awaited freedom. Only their goals are different, because life is not favorable to everyone.
Emilia has well-to-do parents, she is kind, friendly, generous and not very smart. Rebecca is the daughter of poor parents - an artist and a dancer, she is smart, cheerful, determined and pretty. The goal of her life becomes wealth. She is ready to do anything for the sake of her performance, because fortune did not treat her very kindly, giving her relatives without titles and fortune.
Emilia, out of the kindness of her heart, offers Becky to stay with her, to which she gladly agrees. And immediately the girl proceeds to seduce Emilia's brother Joseph. And he almost fell into the net of a green-eyed schemer, but his girlfriend's fiance George Osborne gets in the way, who ruins all her plans. In the end, Joseph gets off the hook.
Soon Becky finds a place as a governess in the house of Sir Pitt Crawley. However, Becky manages to charm all the household, including the eldest son Crowley, whom the owner himself is afraid of. Becky so skillfully insinuates herself into trust that a year later she begins to rule the house and feels almost like the mistress of the estate. Soon she meets Pitt's half-sister, a very rich lady, who takes Becky to London, where she charms the younger Crowley and even manages to secretly marry him. But all the secrets become clear, because after a while Sir Pitt's wife dies, and he offers to marry Becky. And then she realizes how she miscalculated and hurried, marrying the scamp and duelist Rodon. Becky's family is beginning to be ignored by everyone, even the Democrat aunt. She has to survive on Rawdon's small salary, but Becky does not lose her presence of mind and dreams of a brilliant place for herself in society.

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Rebecca Sharp is the daughter of an artist and a dancer, an orphan who has put a lot of effort into securing a place in the sun, hypocritical, cunning, mercenary.
Emily Sedley is a kind, trusting, loyal girl, the daughter of a rich merchant, Rebecca's friend.
Joseph Sedley is Emily's older brother, an obese young man, lazy, peevish, selfish.
George Osborne is an officer, the lover of Emilia Sedley, then her husband, narcissistic, selfish, fond of blowing dust in the eyes.
William Dobbin is a captain, a friend of George Osborne, a noble, honest, straightforward man who loved Emily Sedley all his life.

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William Makepeace Thackeray "Vanity Fair" (1848)

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William Makepeace Thackeray "Vanity Fair" (1848)

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William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was an English satirist and writer. At the age of 18, he entered the University of Cambridge, but remained a student for no more than a year. After leaving Cambridge in 1830, Thackeray went on a trip to Europe: he lived in Weimar and then in Paris, where he studied drawing with the English artist Richard Bonington. Although drawing did not become Thackeray's main occupation, he later illustrated his own novels, demonstrating the ability to convey the characteristic features of his characters in a caricature form. W. Thackeray died of a stroke on December 24, 1863. The writer's last novel, "Denis Duval", remained unfinished.
The literary period - Realism

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I read this book with pleasure.
In my opinion, this is the best novel of the writer, or at least one of the best. The prototype of the main character for this novel to the writer was the famous artist Paul Gauguin. Charles Strickland, a successful stockbroker and an exemplary family man with a wife and children, suddenly gives up everything and leaves for Tahiti, where he is going to take up painting. The novel is written in an easy, I would say, classical language, and translated with dignity. It's nice to read it. It will not overload your psyche or brain in any way. And, at the same time, it will give food to both the mind and the heart.

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The main character of the novel is a rebel, suddenly abandons his wife and children to become an artist. The desire of the individual for absolute freedom, for spiritual perfection is manifested in the following: Strickland is boring, withdrawn, uninteresting to others. His life is monotonous and flows between the stock exchange, where Charles works as a house painter and the house. But in the soul of the hero, the craving for art, for painting grows. This craving, weak at first, gradually develops into a passion that is impossible to cope with. Strickland discovered something that turned his consciousness upside down, freed him from human concepts, prejudices and ideas. All moral restrictions at once lost their power over him.

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The narrative in the novel is conducted on behalf of a certain young writer. At some points in his life, he meets a certain Charles Strickland on the way. At their first meeting, he sees him as a boring, ordinary stockbroker. Charles leads the life of an ordinary family man with two children. He stands out little from his acquaintances, his life is ordinary and simple.

A few months later, the narrator is surprised to learn that Charles Strickland suddenly left his family. Everyone thinks he's gone on the run with his new lover and is living in a luxury hotel in Paris. The wife decides to forgive her husband and asks the young writer to convince her husband to return to her and the children.

Unexpectedly, the author finds Charles in a cheap hotel with almost no money. Family, the opinion of others and his own poverty do not bother Strickland at all, he decided to realize his dream, because now he is an artist.

15 years have passed; Charles Strickland has already passed away. Death came to him on the distant island of Tahiti in the form of leprosy. By the will of fate, the narrator also finds himself in this place and decides to find out how the artist lived in recent years. It turned out that he had been a beggar all this time, sleeping and eating wherever he had to. Then he married a native woman, with whom he lived until his death, this woman did not leave him even when she learned of the disease.

The author returns to London and meets Strickland's first wife. She no longer lives in poverty, as Charles left her, she received an inheritance from her late sister. Reproductions of ex-husband's paintings hang on the walls in the house. Nothing in the conversation with Mrs. Strickland gives away how he did to her, she behaves as if their relationship was quite normal.

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Charles Strickland, a successful stockbroker who left his job, family and homeland in order to become a painter after distorting several destinies, create brilliant canvases appreciated after his death, and perish in Tahiti in poverty and obscurity.

The Narrator.

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William Somerset Maugham «The Moon and Sixpence» (1919)

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William Somerset Maugham «The Moon and Sixpence» (1919)

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William Somerset Maugham (January 25, 1874 - December 16, 1965) was an English writer whose popularity peaked in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1897, Maugham received a medical degree, but did not work in his specialty and devoted himself entirely to literature. Maugham's first novel, Liza of Lambeth, appeared in 1897. The aspiring author quickly gained fame. The comedy "Lady Frederick" (1907) was a huge success with the public.

Most of the time the writer is engaged exclusively in creativity, which brings him worldwide fame and money. He approved the "Somerset Maugham Prize", it was given to young English writers.

The literary period – Romanticism

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When I read this book, written by a writer in the field of science fiction, all its events seemed to me like a nightmare in which the worst expectations came true.
I can say with confidence that the book "The War of the Worlds" has a rather tense plot, and the reader does not get tired of wondering what kind of horrors the main character did not have to go through in it. If you read this book, then know that this is a gorgeous work, and you will certainly be overwhelmed by a flurry of emotions when reading it, and at the end of the work, the denouement, despite such a stormy beginning and successful military actions of the Martians, will be completely unexpected, and at the end of the novel, a load off your mind. But what a relief I managed to experience, just cannot be expressed in words.
And although the book "The War of the Worlds" is a work of fiction, but it is written so plausibly and expressively that I almost believed to the end that everything that was happening was true and was actually happening.

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One of the features of realism is the consideration of a historically specific society, in this case, the narrative is conducted from the first person of the nameless protagonist, a resident of Victorian England at the beginning of the XX century. Life is shown as the closest to reality. The work masterfully draws a panorama of the characters and reactions of the human individual to the cold and insensitive threat of an alien invasion. The writer raises fundamental questions about where the one-sided technological evolution of the mind can lead. Signs of steampunk are also present: a world is shown where the key place is given to alien cars; there are characteristic urban landscapes.

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The book tells about the Martian invasion experienced by an unnamed narrator, in the center of the plot of the science fiction work is the confrontation between humans and aliens. The story begins a few years before the invasion, in 1894, when Mars was closer to Earth than usual, several observatories recorded flashes of light on the surface of the "red planet".
The narrator witnessed one of them through a telescope in the observatory, which he immediately warned his friend Ogilvy, a famous astronomer. Ogilvy quickly dismissed the idea that flares are a sign of life on Mars. He assured the narrator that "the odds against anything human on Mars are a million to one."
The outbreaks continued without explanation for several nights. Early one morning, a "shooting star" appeared over England. She crashes on Horsell Common, a large piece of public land near the narrator's home in Maybury.
When he visited the crash site, he found a crowd gathered around a large cylindrical object submerged in a sand pit. The object was made of metal and looked hollow. The narrator immediately suspects that the object has arrived from Mars. After watching him for some time, he returned to his house.
By the time he next visits the crash site, news of the landing has spread and the number of spectators has increased significantly. The second visit of the narrator is much more eventful: the cylinder opened and a creature resembling a snake got out of it.

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The narration is conducted on behalf of the nameless protagonist, a resident of Victorian England at the beginning of the XX century.
Ogilvy - Narrator's friend, a famous astronomer.
The Martian

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Herbert George Wells «The War of the Worlds» (1897)

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Herbert George Wells «The War of the Worlds» (1897)

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Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was a prolific author who is now best known for his science fiction novels. His most notable science fiction works include The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1907) and The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896). Having won a scholarship to the Royal College of Science in London, he graduated as a scientist. Wells taught in several schools and started his writing career. His first publications were textbooks in biology and geography. A representative of critical realism, a supporter of Fabian socialism. In his later works Wells tended towards social realism and serious political novels in which he portrayed scandalous emancipated women, questions the institution of marriage and in comic style describes the lower-middle class of his youth.

The literary period – realism.

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The Mill on the Floss  1997 by George Eliot | Full Movie | English Literature Movies

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Such books as "The Mill on the Floss" most often do not leave me indifferent, I read them with interest. And even after you finish reading the novel, you still think about the characters and their fates. And there are enough heroes here, but the main ones are Maggie and Tom Tulliver, a sister and her brother. It is their life that has been opening up to us for about 10 years. And, probably, to a greater extent, Maggie, who at the beginning of the novel is still a girl, and at the end is already an adult girl.  But Tom is just calm, straightforward, he loves his sister. In the beginning, everything in the family is well, but the father of the family loves litigation very much, and it immediately becomes clear that this will not bring him to good. And indeed, grief falls on the Tullivers, we learn how each of them perceives and experiences the current circumstances, how Maggie and Tom's lives are changing. And after the events experienced, the relationship between them changes, and not only between them, but also with the people around them, because the characters grow up. George Eliot shows the characters of not only his brother and sister, but also the whole family and relatives very well.  Actually, the first chapters were not given to me very easily, but then I could not tear myself away, although I understood that most likely the story would end tragically. And I can't say that I really liked any of the characters, but I liked the novel itself, even though it made me sad.

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The strengths of Eliot's realism were manifested in this novel: The dramatic beginning inherent in the writer's work reaches tragic heights here. The main conflict is the collision of Maggie Tulliver's bright, extraordinary nature with the bourgeois environment of the provincial town of St. Oggs, with people who are not able to understand her. Maggie's inquisitive mind, her aspirations and impulses make her different from others. Her misfortunes stem from this. Maggie feels lonely, she has to hide her feelings and curb her desires. She cannot unite her life with Philip, who loves her, because their families are divided by enmity; she refuses to become the wife of Stephen, whom she loves, since he is engaged to another. Maggie is sacrificing her happiness for the sake of people dear to her. For her, the struggle between love and duty ends with the victory of duty. But the duel between the desire for self-denial and the living beginnings of her human being is not easy. The tragedy of Maggie's situation lies in the fact that the very essence of her nature is fraught with doom. Such as she must inevitably perish, because she cannot live according to the laws of the surrounding world. The predestination of her death is embodied in the image of the River Floss, on the bank of which stands the Dorlcote Mill and in the waters of which Maggie drowns during the flood.

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The novel describes the life of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, a brother and sister who live together on the banks of the River Floss near the village of St. Oggs (the names are fictional). The events take place in Middle England. The fate of a brother and sister, Maggie and Tom Tulliver, whose family has owned a Mill on the Floss for many generations. My father lost numerous lawsuits and quarreled with important people in his district. As a result, the family plunged into poverty, lost the mill, the father lost his health, the children - their studies, the mother - carefully saved dowry and handmade things. While the biggest problem for Tom was the loss of money (and he undertook to solve it with the energy of youth), for Maggie's soul, her father's enmity with Wakem, whose son Philip became her good friend, was unbearable. Later, becoming an unwitting rival of her friend in love and breaking her father's covenant of enmity with the Wakem, Maggie lost her brother's love, and this eventually made the end of the novel not particularly important.

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Maggie Tulliver is the central character of the novel. The image of the heroine is drawn through the prism of her relationship with her older brother Tom, a hunchbacked, but sensitive and insightful childhood friend Philip Wakem and cousin Lucy Dean's fiance, a brilliant secular young man, Stephen Guest.

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George Eliot "The Mill on the Floss" (1860)

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George Eliot "The Mill on the Floss" (1860)

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George Eliot (It is pseudonym; real name Mary Ann Evans, November 22, 1819 - December 22, 1880) was an English writer. The first success came after the novel "Adam Bede" in 1859, even Queen Victoria, after reading this work, became a fan of Eliot's work. Next, the writer writes two more major novels, partly based on her autobiography: "The Mill on the Floss" and "Silas Marner". There were also attempts to express themselves in poetry, but this experience was not crowned with success.

There are two periods in Eliot's work. In the first (late 50s - early 60s) "Scenes from the life of the clergy" (1858), "Adam Bid" (1859), "The Mill on the Floss" (1860) and "Silas Marner" (1861) were written. In the second (1862-1880) the novels "Romola" (1863), "Felix Holt, the Radical" (1866), "Middle March" (1872) and "Daniel Deronda" (1876) were created.
In the novels of the first period, Eliot writes about rural England. Her heroes are ordinary people. In their environment, she is looking for her positive hero. Eliot contrasts the high moral qualities of ordinary people with the depravity of the rich.
The literary period - realism