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Moving from the industrial riots of discontented millworkers through to the unsought passions of a middle-class woman, and from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny, it poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Through the story of Margaret Hale, the middle-class southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skilfully explores issues of class and gender in the...
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Penguin classics volume 0
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English
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Brought up on a Normandy farm, convent-educated and an avid reader of sentimental novels, Emma Bovary longs for a life of luxury and high romance. She is married to a well-meaning but mediocre country doctor, but she is far from fulfilled. She seeks to escape her boredom through extravagant spending sprees and, eventually, adultery.
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The Odd Women (1893) is a novel by George Gissing. Inspired by a report of over one million more women living in Britain than men, Gissing sought to explore the societal and personal implications of unmarried life while exploring the demands of the growing feminist movement. The Odd Women is a story of romance, independence, and the pressures of society that poses important questions about convention in Victorian England while proving surprisingly...
5) Kim
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English
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Classics - St. Charles Public Library
Historical Fiction Set in India
If you Like The Covenant of Water, try...
Historical Fiction Set in India
If you Like The Covenant of Water, try...
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Rudyard Kipling's epic rendition of the imperial experience in India is also his greatest long work. Born in India and growing into early manhood, Kim is the son of an Irish soldier born under British Imperial rule in 19th century India. Left in the care of a half-caste woman, Kim is free to explore the back allies and bazaars of Lahore. But when he meets with his father's old regiment he trades his native clothes for European suits and abandons his...
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A novel following the life of Nell Trent an orphan, who lives with her grandfather in his shop of odds and ends. Nell does not complain, but she lives a lonely existence with almost no friends her own age. Her only friend is Kit, an honest boy employed at the shop, whom she is teaching to write. Obsessed with ensuring that Nell does not die in poverty as her parents did, her grandfather attempts to make Nell a good inheritance through gambling at...
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John Harmon returns to England as his father's heir. Believed drowned under suspicious circumstances--a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity--John evaluates Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with colorful Victorian characters and incidents -- the faded aristocrats and parvenus gathered at the Veneering's dinner table, Betty Higden and her terror of the workhouse and the greedy plottings of Silas...
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Overview: Alexandre Dumas's novel of justice, retribution, and self-discovery - one of the most enduringly popular adventure tales ever written - appears here in a newly revised translation. "This novel tells the story of Edmond Dantes, wrongfully imprisoned for life in the supposedly impregnable sea fortress the Chateau d'If. After a daring escape, and after unearthing a hidden treasure revealed to him by a fellow prisoner, he devotes the rest...
10) Middlemarch
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"Instead of choosing to wed a wealthy landowner and settle for a comfortable life, Dorothea Brooke decides to marry Edward Casaubon -- a dull scholar who is her senior by a few decades. Dorothea hopes the union will afford her with the opportunity to share in her husband's intellectual pursuits, but even her best efforts can't save the disastrous marriage. Meanwhile, idealistic doctor Tertius Lydgate has progressive ideas about the medical field,...
11) Agnes Grey
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English
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When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meagre income and assert her independence. But Agnes's enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable Bloomfield children and then with the painful disdain of the haughty Murray family; the only kindness she receives comes from Mr Weston, the sober young curate....
12) Dombey and Son
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Obsessed with his desire to have a son as an heir, Paul Dombey all but ignores his eldest daughter Florence. Mr Dombey's dream becomes a reality when his wife gives birth to a baby boy. Unfortunately, his wife tragically dies during childbirth, leaving Paul alone with Florence and his newborn son, Paul. Mr Dombey's son is not a healthy child and even after being sent to the Brighton seaside for his illness, young Paul passes away. Mr. Dombey is crushed...
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Three novellas that brilliantly portray English country and clergy life at the turn of the nineteenth century from the author of Middlemarch.
Initially appearing in Blackwood's Magazine, this trio of linked stories comprises George Eliot's first published work. Together they form a portrait of small-town life in Midlands, England, where changes are affecting both society at large and religious beliefs and institutions.
In "The Sad Fortunes...
14) The moonstone
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The Moonstone was published in 1868 and concerns the huge yellow diamond of the title that was once stolen from an Indian shrine. Rachel Verrinder receives the stone as a gift and does not realize that it has been passed to her in a sinister form of revenge by John Herncastle who, it transpires, acquired the moonstone by means of murder and theft. The jewel also brings bad luck. The stone disappears on the very night it is given to Rachel, though,...
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Overview: Anne, like her sisters Emily and Charlotte, published under a male pseudonym, Acton Bell, yet still this novel was scorned by many for its exposure of the abusive male chauvinism concealed, like all things sexual, during the Victorian Era. Just as she had to use a male pseudonym in order to be free to publish, as women authors were not yet deemed acceptable or bankable, Helen Graham, the novel's protagonist and a battered wife, assumes an...
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Introduces an array of characters, from the sinister to the comic, and moves to a haunting climax in an atmospheric murder mystery that features the seemingly benevolent John Jasper, a secret opium addict, and his relationship with his newly engaged nephew, Edwin Drood.
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"In this lively, intimate portrayal of county society Trollope introduces two of his most endearing heroines. Lilian and Bell Dale live with their mother at the Small house in Allington, near their uncle, who inhabits the adjoining Great house. Pretty, spirited and warm-hearted, they are not short of suitors. Before long Lily has succumbed to the charms of the dashing young swell Alphonse Crosbie, while their cousin Bernard, spurred on by their uncle,...
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"The work of a young novelist at the height of his powers, "Nicholas Nickleby" is one of the touchstones of the English comic novel. Around the central story of Nicholas Nickleby and the misfortunes of his family, Dickens created some of his most wonderful characters: the muddle-headed Mrs Nickleby, the gloriously theatrical Crummles, their protege Miss Petowker, the pretentious Mantalinis and the mindlessly cruel Squeers and his wife. "Nicholas Nickleby"'s...
20) The ambassadors
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Sent by his fiancée to seek her son who has run away with an entrancing Parisian woman, Lambert Strether finds himself nearly as bewitched by the culture and women of Europe as his would-be son-in-law. Strether gets chased or dragged across provincial France by a slew of influences intent either on drawing the pair of bachelors home to Boston or showing him the world, and winds up testing his patience along with his own illusions.