What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorA Child of the Jago
Arthur Morrison · 322 pages
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens · 742 pages
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy · 440 pages
Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a liv
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell
A great modern classic of Negative Utopia, with chilling implications for our own time.
Mrs. Engels
Gavin McCrea · 366 pages
A tale inspired by the enigmatic Irish lover of Communist Manifesto co-author Frederick Engels traces the experiences of an impoverished factory employee who navigates complex landscapes of Victorian society.
The Nether World
George Gissing · 392 pages
Mary Barton
Elizabeth Gaskell · 417 pages
Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilson in the hope of marrying Henry Carson, the mill owner's son, and making a better life for herself and her father. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself painfully torn between the two men. Through Mary's dilemma, and the moving portrayal of he
Tipping the Velvet
Sarah Waters · 480 pages
Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-h
Third Life Of Grange Copeland
Alice Walker · 302 pages
"Despondent over the futility of life in the South, black tenant farmer Grange Copeland leaves his wife and son in Georgia to head North. After meeting an equally humiliating existence there, he returns to Georgia, years later, to find his son, Brownfield, imprisoned for the murder of his wife. As the guardian of the couple's youngest daughter, Grange Copeland is looking at his third and final cha
Christ in Concrete
Pietro Di Donato · 240 pages
Rickshaw Boy
Lao She
First published in China in 1937, *Rickshaw Boy* is the story of Xiangzi, an honest and serious country boy who works as a rickshaw puller in Beijing. A man of simple needs whose greatest ambition is to one day own his own rickshaw, Xiangzi is nonetheless thwarted, time and again, in his attempts to improve his lot in life. One of the most important and popular works of twentieth-century Chinese
The Grapes of Wrath/The Moon is Down/Cannery Row/East of Eden/Of Mice & Men
John Steinbeck · 950 pages
Contains: [The Grapes of Wrath][1] [The Moon is Down][2] [Cannery Row][3] [East of Eden][4] [Of Mice and Men][5] [1]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL23205W [2]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL23200W [3]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL23199W [4]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL23166W [5]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL23204W
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Tales of New York
Stephen Crane · 239 pages
Love on the Dole
Walter Greenwood · 256 pages
Agnes Grey
Anne Bronte · 184 pages
In her Introduction to an edition of "Agnes Grey," Barbara A. Suess writes "Bronte provides a portrait of the governess that is as sympathetic as her fictional indictment of the shallow, selfish moneyed class is biting." Anne Bronte relies on her own personal involvement in her duties as a home teacher to bring Agnes Grey to life. Agnes, a rector's daughter, must take employment as a governess to
Jennie Gerhardt
Theodore Dreiser · 370 pages
Dreiser's second novel and his own personal favorite features an impoverished heroine who, in simply trying to make her way in the world, inadvertently defies a host of social conventions.
The Outsiders
S.E. Hinton · 192 pages
According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs f
London Labour and the London Poor
Henry Mayhew, Victor E. Neuburg · 450 pages
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 320 pages
Edith Wharton's most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War, is a brilliantly realized anatomy of New York society in the 1870s, the world in which she grew up, and from which she spent her life escaping. Newland Archer, Wharton's protagonist, charming, tactful, enlightened, is a thorough product of this society; he accepts its standards and abides by its rules but
Sons and Lovers
D.H. Lawrence · 447 pages
Sons and Lovers, a story of working-class England, is D. H. Lawrence’s third novel. It went through various drafts, and was titled “Paul Morel” until the final draft, before being published and met with an indifferent reaction from contemporary critics. Modern critics now consider it to be D. H. Lawrence’s masterpiece, with the Modern Library placing it ninth in its “100 Best English-Language Nove
Clover Moon
Jacqueline Wilson · 385 pages
Clover Moon's imagination is her best escape from a life of hardship in poverty-stricken Victorian London. When tragedy plunges her into a world of grief, Clover realizes that everything she loved about the place she called home is gone. Clover hears of a place she could run to, but where will she find the courage - and the chance - to break free? And could leaving her family be just what she need
L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop)
Emile Zola · 480 pages
The Good Earth
Pearl S. Buck · 316 pages
This tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall. Hard times come upon Wang Lung and his family when flood and drought