This masterpiece will never cease to impress and to awe. Published in 1605, long before anything of similar stature was produced elsewhere in Europe [1], this rollicking tale of a man driven to the edge of folly by his passion for books (readers, beware!) and his immersion in the dream-world they project (video gamers, beware!) to go out into the wild world out there to combat its injustices (social reformers, beware!) and win the heart of his idealised Dulcina (lovers, beware!) is a (…)
Most recent articles
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"Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes (1605)
11 November 2025, by Miguel de Cervantes -
"Memoirs of Captain Alonso de Contreras" (ca. 1640)
25 October 2025, by Alonso de ContrerasThe spectacular memoir [1] of a Spanish soldier in the heyday of Spanish might in the early 17th century, describing his adventurous and excessively violent career as a soldier, sailor and officer of the Order of Malta from the time he left home in 1595 at the age of 13 – with the first of a great many killings already behind him – until the memoir comes to an end almost 30 years later.
This fascinating memoir, that historical research has shown to be scrupulously exact in all its military (…) -
"The Adventurous Simplicissimus" by Hans Jacob Christoph von Grimmelshausen (1668)
21 October 2025, by Hans Jacob Christoffel von GrimmelshausenAt the beginning of this quite extraordinary saga the narrator recounts how, when he was 10 years old and could neither read nor write nor count beyond 5, he was captured by marauding soldiers while tending sheep and witnessed the devastation of his family home, managing to escape to the nearby forest with the screams of his mother and sister in his ears. Where he was taken in hand by an erudite hermit who baptized him Simplex/Simplicius/Simplicissimus [1] and taught him to read, write and (…)
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"Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe (1719)
10 October 2025, by Daniel DefoeThe great story – one of the very first English novels – about how an adventurous man in the 17th century accomplishes his destiny when marooned on a desert island, where he manages not only to survive but to prosper, to find spiritual peace and comfort in his condition, to open his heart to a native whose life he has saved, and finally to triumph in a series of extraordinary challenges that have to be read to be believed.
This stirring, powerful and moving story that almost instantly (…) -
"Moll Flanders" by Daniel Defoe (1721)
3 October 2025, by Daniel DefoeOne of the very first English novels, published in 1721, only two years after his classic Robinson Crusoe, this racy and most entertaining account of a young woman’s adventures, sexual and otherwise – she gets married five times, goes twice to Virginia in America and narrowly escapes being hung –, while very different from its famous predecessor does tell us an awful lot about the conditions of living, loving and dying at the time (the account ends in 1680) on the lower end of the social (…)
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"A Journal of the Plague Year 1665 in London" by Daniel Defoe (1722)
2 October 2025, by Daniel DefoeA dramatic, very articulate, very compassionate and very precious “virtual memoir”, recounting in vivid detail the unfolding and the climax of the Great Plague of 1665 that devastated London – the world’s biggest city at the time – by the author of the immortal Robinson Crusoe [1].
A thoroughly researched and well-documented account written from the point of view and under the signature of Defoe’s uncle Henry Foe, who had lived through that cataclysmic event – Daniel was 5 years old at the (…) -
"Gulliver’s Travels" by Jonathan Swift (1726)
1 October 2025, by Jonathan SwiftJonathan Swift’s scathing satire of the society of his time in the form of a seafarer’s account of all the amazing peoples he had encountered in strange far-off places – the tiny Lilliputs, the enormous Brobdingnags, the math-and-music-loving peoples of the floating island of Laputa and the interesting mores of their womenfolk, the foolish professors, scientists and artists of Balnibarbi, the famous spectres from all epochs in Glubbdubdrib, the immortals of Luggnagg and, especially, the (…)
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"The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" by Henry Fielding (1749)
29 September 2025, by Henry FieldingTom Jones comes into this history as a new-born baby found one morning in the bed of Mr. Allworthy, a wealthy country squire, who adopts him. The story rapidly skips ahead to when he’s a dashing fellow of eighteen full of life who has a tendency of getting into trouble, in particular with the feminine portion of humanity. He’s expelled from Mr. Allworthy’s home because of a false accusation brought against him by his scheming cousin Blifil, the only son of Mr. Allworthy’s deceased sister – (…)
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"Tristam Shandy" by Laurence Sterne (1759)
22 September 2025, by Laurence SterneThis effervescent brimming-over-with-the-joy-of-life novel in the form of a fictional autobiography goes shooting off in every which way as one thought leads to another, so that it takes the verbose but quite spell-bindingly fascinating and funny author a whole 80 pages to bring his life story (that starts naturally enough but nevertheless very originally with the hilarious account of the moment of his conception) up to the moment of his birth. This great book was written in the early days (…)
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"Candide" by Voltaire (1759)
20 September 2025, by VoltaireVoltaire’s brilliant parody of the ideological notion that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds [1], ironically sub-titled "Optimism", that was written in three incredibly productive days(!) and has retained its charm, its venom and its Enlightenment message for mankind ever since.
This 34,000-word English translation was done by an unidentified translator for an edition of Candide that was printed in New York in 1908.
An e-book, with the original text in an annex, is (…)