Fiction
Bleak House
Given their pedagogical nature, many Victorian novels and short stories were highly politicized; their narratives filtered through the value schemes, social views, and conscious purposes of their authors.
David Copperfield
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” Thus opens The Personal History of David Copperfield the Younger, the novel which Charles Dickens claimed as his ‘favourite child.
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is the touchstone for all that we have come to associate with Dickens. From the orphaned narrator, Pip, to the gallery of fascinating and hauntingly grotesque characters, this gothic novel is at once a morality tale and an absorbing mystery.
Middlemarch
It is in Middlemarch that George Eliot?s genius as a writer and social reformer is best showcased. One of the greatest Victorian triple-deckers, Middlemarch is the story of the idealistic Dorothea Brooke, who, suffocated by the strictures of her late husband?
The Age of Innocence
In her 1920 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton depicts with humor, wisdom and elegance the restrictions of life in the highest echelons of Old New York society.
Little Dorrit
Born in a debtor’s prison where her father has been sent, Amy Dorrit’s story is an indictment against the inequity of the Victorian English legal system. Dickens writes with sympathy and venomous humor in this exploration of social injustice and inequality.
The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
Set partly in America, which Dickens had visited in 1842, the novel includes a searing satire on the United States and is the story of the two Chuzzlewits, Martin and Jonas, who have inherited the characteristic Chuzzlewit selfishness.
Oliver Twist
The famous tale of a young orphan's experiences in Victorian London. Dicken’s second novel and possibly his darkest, Oliver Twist deals with theft, child abuse, prostitution and murder, but yet still manages to convey Dickens' faith in the ultimate goodness of man.
Wives and Daughters
Set in English Society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Wives and Daughters centers on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries, a new step-sister enters Molly's quiet life - loveable, but worldly and troubling, Cynthia.
Mill on the Floss
Maggie Tulliver refuses to fit in to the staid domestic scene that Victorian society dictated for women. In her attempts to chart her own course through life, Maggie flirts with community disapproval and risks being ostracized for her rebelliousness. George Eliot portrays Maggie?