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欧洲 · William Shakespeare · England · plays

Continue Hamlet: Horatio's version

The stage is littered with bodies, and Horatio alone is left to tell the story. Shakespeare gives him the last word...

欧洲 · Emily Brontë · England · novels

Continue Wuthering Heights: the next generation

The ghosts walk no more; young Cathy and Hareton are learning to read together. Emily Brontë ends in fragile peace....

欧洲 · Charlotte Brontë · England · novels

Continue Jane Eyre: Bertha's voice

Bertha Mason is the madwoman in the attic — Charlotte Brontë never lets her speak. But she had a life in Jamaica...

欧洲 · Jane Austen · England · novels

Continue Pride and Prejudice: ten years of marriage

Ten years of marriage. The estate, the children, Lydia still Lydia, Lady Catherine still Lady Catherine. Austen gave...

欧洲 · William Shakespeare · England · plays

Continue Macbeth: Malcolm's first year

Malcolm takes the throne and order is restored — on the surface. But the witches prophesied that Banquo's line would...

欧洲 · Oscar Wilde · Ireland · novels

Continue Dorian Gray: who finds the painting

The portrait is slashed and Dorian dies, suddenly old and withered. Wilde ends in moral symmetry. But the attic...

欧洲 · Bram Stoker · Ireland · novels

Continue Dracula: Whitby, one year later

The Count is destroyed — or so Van Helsing's band believes. Stoker left only ashes and a question mark. Continue:...

欧洲 · Mary Shelley · England · novels

Continue Frankenstein: the creature after Victor

The creature vanishes into the Arctic darkness, and Mary Shelley lets him go. But he is still alive out there — the...

欧洲 · Charles Dickens · England · novels

Continue A Tale of Two Cities: Lucie's long life

Sydney Carton goes to the guillotine: 'a far, far better thing.' Lucie lives on, carrying his sacrifice like a...

欧洲 · Charles Dickens · England · novels

Continue Great Expectations: the third ending

Dickens rewrote the ending of Great Expectations twice — first bleak, then hopeful. He couldn't decide what Pip...

欧洲 · Arthur Conan Doyle · England · stories

Continue Sherlock Holmes: the case Watson never wrote

Doyle hinted at cases Watson never wrote down — 'the giant rat of Sumatra' and others. The canon is full of locked...

欧洲 · R. L. Stevenson · Scotland · novels

Continue Jekyll and Hyde: Utterson's decision

Utterson has read Jekyll's full confession. He knows everything now — the powders, the murders, the suicide....

欧洲 · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · Germany · verse drama

Continue Faust: what the saved man does with eternity

Goethe saves Faust at the very end — angels carry him up, and the whole tragedy tilts toward grace. But eternity is...

欧洲 · Leo Tolstoy · Russia · novels

Continue Anna Karenina: Anna steps back

Anna steps in front of the train — or does she? Tolstoy's ending is inevitable, but inevitability is a choice the...

欧洲 · Nikolai Gogol · Russia (burned manuscript) · novels

Continue Dead Souls: the burned chapters

Gogol burned the manuscript of Dead Souls Part Two in a religious crisis — the chapters went up in smoke, and he...

欧洲 · Dante Alighieri · Italy · poetry

Continue the Divine Comedy: Dante after Paradise

Dante climbs from Hell through Purgatory to Paradise and beholds the Love that moves the sun and the other stars....

欧洲 · François Rabelais · France · novels

Continue Gargantua: what the bottle said

Gargantua and Pantagruel quest for the Oracle of the Holy Bottle — 'Drink!' Rabelais died mid-sentence, in a way;...

欧洲 · Giovanni Boccaccio · Italy · stories

Continue the Decameron: the eleventh day

Ten days, ten stories a day, one hundred tales to outwait the plague. Boccaccio's brigata returns to Florence when...