18 books like He knew he was right
Amelia
Against her mother's wishes, Amelia marries Captain William Booth, a young army officer, and runs away to London. William is unjustly imprisoned in Newgate, and is subsequently seduced by Miss Matthews. Amelia stays faithful to her husband and forgives his transgression, but William soon draws them into trouble again as he accrues gambling debts trying to lift the couple out of poverty.
Shares Married people, Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction, England
The Newcomes
The Newcomes is Thackeray's most essentially 'Victorian' novel, generous in its proportions, sharp in its criticism of the moral convolutions of the age, and encyclopaedic in its reference. Set in the 1830s and 1840s, a period of rapid change and of political and economic development, the novel considers the fortunes and misfortunes of a 'most respectable' extended middle-class family. The action…
Shares Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction, England, Social life and customs
The Painted Veil
A story of the beautiful but love-starve Kitty Fane who is forced to accompany her husband to the heart of a cholera epidemic. She is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.
Shares Married people, Psychological fiction, Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction
The Last Chronicle of Barset
*The Chronicles of Barsetshire, Book 6: The Last Chronicle of Barset*
Shares Psychological fiction, Long Now Manual for Civilization, Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction
The uncommercial traveller
A collection of seventeen sketches which grew out of Dickens' insomnia. He took long walks through London at night and his observations resulted in these sketches.
Shares Long Now Manual for Civilization, British and irish fiction, Social life and customs
Shirley
Shirley, published in 1849, was Charlotte Brontë’s second novel after Jane Eyre. Published under her pseudonym of “Currer Bell,” it differs in several respects from that earlier work. It is written in the third person with an omniscient narrator, rather than the first-person of Jane Eyre, and incorporates the themes of industrial change and the plight of unemployed workers. It also features…
Shares Long Now Manual for Civilization, British and irish fiction, England, Social life and customs
Mr. Scarborough's Family
It will be necessary, for the purpose of my story, that I shall go back more than once from the point at which it begins, so that I may explain with the least amount of awkwardness the things as they occurred, which led up to the incidents that I am about to tell; and I may as well say that these first four chapters of the book - though they may be thought to be the most interesting of them all…
Shares Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction, England, Social life and customs
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Like many of Hardy’s novels, The Mayor of Casterbridge is set in the fictional county of Wessex in the mid 1800s. It begins with Michael Henchard, a young hay-trusser, drunk on rum, auctioning off his wife and baby daughter at a village fair. The next day, overcome with remorse, Henchard resolves to turn his life around. When we meet Henchard eighteen years later, temperance and hard work have…
Shares Psychological fiction, Long Now Manual for Civilization, British and irish fiction, Psychology
The small house at Allington
*The Chronicles of Barsetshire*, Book 5: *The Small House at Allington*
*The Small House at Allington* introduces Trollope's most charming heroine, the betwitching Lily Dale, onto the Barsetshire scene. She so endeared herself to readers of the Cornhill Magazine, where A Small House was first published in serial form, that Trollope was bombarded by letters begging him to marry her to her…
Shares Long Now Manual for Civilization, Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction, England
Orley Farm
When Joseph Mason of Groby Park, Yorkshire, died, he left his estate to his family. A codicil to his will, however, left Orley Farm (near London) to his much younger second wife and infant son. The will and the codicil were in her handwriting, and there were three witnesses, one of whom was no longer alive. A bitterly fought court case confirmed the codicil.
Twenty years pass. Lady Mason lives…
Shares Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction, England, Social life and customs
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
**Librarian note: Alternate cover editions for this ISBN are: "Woman in white dress" (with the title on white and black background), "Woman at the easel" on a black and blue background, and "Furniture, easel and window".**
***Anne Brontë's second novel is a passionate and courageous challenge to the conventions supposedly upheld by Victorian society and reflected in circulating-library…
Shares Married people, Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction, England
Clayhanger
This coming-of-age story set in the Midlands of Victorian England follows Edwin Clayhanger as he leaves school, takes over the family business and falls in love. Bennett wrote it in 1910 at the Royal Albion Hotel, Brighton, and in Lausanne. Edwin Clayhanger's father, Darius, has risen from an extremely poor background, which Bennett repeatedly returns to, to become a prominent printer in Bursley.…
Shares British and irish fiction, England, Social life and customs
Man and Wife
On a summer's morning, between thirty and forty years ago, two girls were crying bitterly in the cabin of an East Indian passenger ship, bound outward, from Gravesend to Bombay.
Shares Married people, Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction, England
Cousin Henry
When the Squire of Llanfeare dies, his nephew Henry inherits the estate. Rumours are rife that the Squire had named his niece Isabel as his heir, and that Henry is an impostor. Mr Apjohn, the family lawyer, takes it upon himself to investigate.
Shares Long Now Manual for Civilization, Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction, Social life and customs
Ruth (volume II)
Ruth Volume 2 By Elizabeth Gaskell A sensitive portrayal of relationships within small towns and an exploration of seduction and illegitimacy within a small Dissenting community where tolerance and rigid morality clash.
Shares Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction, England, Social life and customs
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
This is a story of different loves; and of how a man may need two women in such a way that he can be happy with neither. Sacred and profane love are related opposites; the one enjoyed renders the other necessary, so that the ever unsatisfied heart swings constantly to and fro.
Shares Married people, Domestic fiction
The Rainbow
(Brangwen Family #1)
Lush with imagery, this is the story of three generations of Brangwen women living during the decline of English rural life. Banned upon publication, it explores the most taboo subjects of its time: marriage, physical love, and one family's sexual mores.
Shares Domestic fiction, British and irish fiction, England, Social life and customs
Vanity Fair
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles - military and domestic - are fought,…
Shares Married people, British and irish fiction, England, Social life and customs