John living was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942, and he once admitted that he was a “grim” child. Although he excelled in English at school and knew by the time he graduated that he wanted to write novels, it was not until he met a young...
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a nearly complete rewrite of the abandoned Stephen Hero novel, the original manuscript of which was partially destroyed in a fit of rage during an argument with Nora. A kunstlerroman, or story of the...
One of Dickens’ most enduringly popular stories is Oliver Twist, an early work published 1837-8. Like many of his later novels, its central theme is the hardship faced by the dispossessed and those of the outside of ‘polite’ society. Oliver...