Books like Middlemarch
An idealistic young woman in 1830s provincial England marries a dry old scholar, and her story intertwines with a doctor's ruinous marriage and the whole web of a town on the eve of reform.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of Middlemarch
The Return of the Native
A Paris diamond merchant returns to Egdon Heath to become a schoolteacher, and his marriage to a restless woman who longs to escape the heath ends in tragedy.
The Mill on the Floss
A young woman's passionate nature collides with provincial convention in mid-Victorian England, and the cost of being too much for your world is devastating.
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Drunk at a country fair, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter to a sailor, and years later, when he has become the respected mayor of Casterbridge, his past comes back to him.
Silas Marner
A solitary weaver in rural England loses his gold, adopts a foundling child, and discovers that human connection is worth more than anything he hoarded.
The Forsyte Saga
Three novels following the Forsytes, a wealthy London family of the late Victorian age, beginning with Soames, a solicitor who treats his beautiful wife Irene as one more of his possessions.
Anna Karenina
A married aristocrat's affair with a dashing officer unravels her life, her family, and her sanity against the backdrop of Russian high society.
Main Street
Carol Milford, a young, idealistic librarian from St Paul, marries a small-town doctor and moves to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, determined to bring culture and reform to its one dusty Main Street.
Buddenbrooks
Four generations of a Lübeck merchant family from their commercial height through their slow bourgeois rot, in the novel that made the 25-year-old Mann.
Sinister Street
Michael Fane, born in the 1880s to a mother who is often away and a father he never sees, grows up in Kensington with his sister and their nurse, and goes on to school in West London.
The Portrait of a Lady
A young American woman in 1870s Europe navigates suitors, social codes, and the trap of a marriage that looks like freedom but feels like a prison.
Jane Eyre
A plain governess falls in love with her employer, only to discover his mansion hides a secret that makes their marriage impossible.
War and Peace
Five aristocratic families navigate love, ambition, and survival as Napoleon's invasion of Russia reshapes the world around them.