18 books like Jude the Obscure
En cas de malheur
Dans la tourmente de la passionQuelque chose d'insidieux s'est glissé dans l'existence de Lucien Gobillot. Sa tranquillité, son succès professionnel et sa réputation mondaine, résultats d'un mariage ambitieux et de quelques complaisances juridiques, sont menacés. Ce qui aurait pu n'être qu'une passade sans lendemain, semblable à celles que sa femme Viviane lui consent avec une complicité…
Shares: Adultery, Romance & Relationships
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne's powerful tale of forbidden love, shame and revenge comes to life in this manga presentation of the classic story. When Hester Prynne bears an illegitimate child, she is introduced to the ugliness, complexity, and ultimately the strength of the human spirit. Though set in a Puritan community during the Colonial American period, the moral dilemmas of personal responsibility…
Shares: Illegitimate children, Adultery, History
Bleak House
As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo,…
Shares: Illegitimate children, Open_syllabus_project, Social life and customs, History
The Scarlet Letter
A stark and allegorical tale of adultery, guilt, and social repression in Puritan New England, The Scarlet Letter is a foundational work of American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne's exploration of the dichotomy between the public and private self, internal passion and external convention, gives us the unforgettable Hester Prynne, who discovers strength in the face of ostracism and emerges as a…
Shares: Illegitimate children, Adultery, History
The Sound and the Fury
In many ways this was an experimental novel, using several differing narrative styles. Divided into four parts, the author relates the same episodes from four different viewpoints, using a different style for each. The story concerns various members of a Southern family, once wealthy landowners but now struggling to maintain their reputation.
Shares: Illegitimate children, Death, Social life and customs
The Way of the World
The Way of the World is a comedy play written by the English playwright William Congreve, first performed in 1700. It premiered in the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London. It is widely regarded by critics as one of the finest works of Restoration comedy ever written, and has often been called a centrepiece of the genre. Initially, however, the play struck many audience members as continuing…
Shares: Adultery, Romance & Relationships, Social life and customs
Howards End
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. A strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the pretensions of her husband's smug English family to ruin her life. Howards End is considered by some to be Forster's masterpiece
Shares: Illegitimate children, Romance & Relationships, Social life and customs, Romance
Анна Каренина
Described by William Faulkner as the best novel ever written and by Fyodor Dostoevsky as “flawless,” Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and thereby exposes herself to the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of…
Shares: Adultery, Social life and customs, Romance, History
The Return of the Native
The native of the title is Clym Yeobright, who returns to the area from the bright society of Paris and, as any reader of Hardy knows, all is not smooth. He is quickly taken by and marries the one woman he should not--Eustacia Vye. The suffering that follows is mitigated somewhat by the ending.
Shares: Adultery, Social life and customs, Romance, History
Adam Bede
Adam Bede is a hardy young carpenter who cares for his aging mother. His one weakness is the woman he loves blindly: the trifling town beauty, Hetty Sorrel, whose only delights are her baubles-and the delusion that the careless Captain Donnithorne may ask for her hand. Betrayed by their innocence, both Adam and Hetty allow their foolish hearts to trap them in a triangle of seduction, murder, and…
Shares: Illegitimate children, Social life and customs
The troll garden
"This collection of Willa Cather stories - her first book of fiction and the capstone of her early career - is as relevant today as at the time of its initial publication. As different and individually distinguished as the seven stories may be, they share as their subject the role and status of the artist in American society.
The passions, ambitions, and pretensions, the cant and the pathos of…
Shares: Romance & Relationships, Social life and customs
Parlour games
A game of "Questions and Commands" depicted by [[James Gillray, 1788]]
Shares: Adultery, Social life and customs
Autumn Lover
Returning to her Wyoming ranch at the Civil War's end, Elyssa Sutton finds it picked bare by scavengers and coveted by determined men. Yet the proud young woman vows never again to abandon her Ruby Mountain home-though it means enlisting the aid of a dark and dangerous stranger who lives for revenge alone.
Hunter Maxwell has suffered from the savagery of outlaws and the faithlessness of a woman.…
Shares: Romance & Relationships, Romance
A dark devotion
When the wife of an old friend disappears, criminal lawyer Alex has strong reason to suspect that he had good motives for murdering her and must find out what has happened to her for all their sakes.
Shares: Adultery, Romance & Relationships
The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
Forty-nine stories reflect much of the intensity of Hemingway's own life and environment.
Shares: Open_syllabus_project, Social life and customs, History
Far from the Madding Crowd
Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life, and tragedy ensues,…
Shares: Open_syllabus_project, Social life and customs, Romance
The Good Soldier
This is the saddest story I have ever heard. We had known the Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme intimacy - or, rather with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove's with your hand. My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about…
Shares: Adultery, Social life and customs, History
The dead secret
The Dead Secret is a novel published by Wilkie Collins, first in 1857 as a series in Charles Dickens Household Words weekly magazine and later the same year as a book. Much like his later novel The Woman in White (1860), it can be considered one of the earliest example of a sensation novel, as it contains themes of illegitimacy, blackmail, and false identity.
Shares: Illegitimate children, Social life and customs, History