18 books like The Portrait of a Lady
Waiting
For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young. Every year he visits her in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still…
Shares: Triangles, Married people, Manners and customs, Romance & Relationships
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 women, Married people, Manners and customs, Social life and customs
The Age of Innocence
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…
Shares: Triangles, Married people, Social life and customs, Historical Fiction
Middlemarch
Eliot’s epic of 19th century provincial social life, set in a fictitious Midlands town in the years 1830-32, has several interlocking storylines blended effortlessly together to form a fully coherent narrative. Its main themes are the status of women, social expectations and hypocrisy, religion, political reform and education. It has often been called the greatest novel in the English language.
Shares: Married women, Triangles, Married people, Social life and customs
Pavilion of Women
A los cuarenta años, Madame Wu, esposa de un miembro de una de las dinastías de terratenientes más consideradas de China, abandona voluntariamente la vida matrimonial y busca una concubina para su marido. Su decisión cambia la vida de todos los que la rodean... A las puertas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la familia se enfrenta a la encrucijada entre tradición, comunismo y pensamiento occidental,…
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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: Manners and customs, Romance & Relationships, Social life and customs
Sad Cypress
Cousins by marriage and lovers by inclination, Roddy and Elinor were the ideal match. He loathed any display of emotion, while she was composed at all times. Then they got an anonymous letter warning that their rich Aunt Laura was thinking of cutting them off, and their perfect world vanished. Roddy did the unthinkable, and fell in love. And Elinor found herself charged with murder. When Hercule…
Shares: Triangles, Inheritance and succession, Historical Fiction, Romance
The Headsman: Or, The Abbaye Des Vignerons. A Tale
Early in October 1832, a travelling-carriage stopped on the summit of that long descent where the road pitches from the elevated plain of Moudon in Switzerland to the level of the lake of Geneva, immediately above the little city of Vevey. The postilion had dismounted to chain a wheel, and the halt enabled those he conducted to catch a glimpse of the lovely scenery of that remarkable view.
Shares: Americans, Historical Fiction
The Last Days of Pompeii
Un classique de la littérature qui redonne vie à la civilisation pompéienne disparue dans l'éruption du Vésuve. Pompéi, 24 août 79 après Jésus-Christ. Cette petite ville romaine du sud de l'Italie vit, sans le savoir, ses dernières heures. L'animation de cette cité florissante ne laisse en rien présager le désastre à venir. Pourtant, à quelques centaines de mètres de là, le Vésuve est en train de…
Shares: Italy, Historical Fiction
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 fiction. The…
Shares: Married women, Married people, Manners and customs, Social life and customs
Washington Square
With a new afterword by Michael CunninghamWhat Catherine Sloper lacks in brains and beauty, she makes up for by being "very good." The handsome Morris Townsend would do anything to win her hand-even if it means pretending that he loves the homely ingenue, and cares nothing for her opulent wealth.
Throughout time, the women of the world always had limited rights when it came to anything. You…
Shares: Inheritance and succession, Fathers and daughters, Romance & Relationships, Historical Fiction
The Family
What is a family? Mario Puzo first answered that question, unforgettably, in his landmark bestseller The Godfather; with the creation of the Corleones he forever redefined the concept of blood loyalty. Now, thirty years later, Puzo enriches us further with his ultimate vision of the subject, in a masterpiece that crowns his remarkable career: the story of the greatest crime family in Italian…
Shares: Italy, Manners and customs, Social life and customs, Historical Fiction
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: Inheritance and succession, Manners and customs, Social life and customs
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: Triangles, Manners and customs, Social life and customs, Romance
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, Historical Fiction, Romance
Twilight in Italy
In these impressions of the Italian countryside, Lawrence transforms ordinary incidents into passages of intense beauty. "Twilight in Italy" is a vibrant account of Lawrence's stay among the people of Lake Garda, whose decaying lemon gardens bear witness to the twilight of a way of life centuries old.
Shares: Italy, Manners and customs, Social life and customs
The food of love
In the sumptuous tradition of Chocolat and Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and already optioned for a major motion picture, comes a magical tale of romantic passion, culinary delight—and Italy.Captain James Gould arrives in wartime Naples assigned to discourage marriages between British soldiers and their gorgeous Italian girlfriends. But the innocent young officer is soon distracted by an…
Shares: Italy, Americans
Emma
Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters. Before she began the novel, Austen wrote, "I am going to take a…
Shares: Fathers and daughters, Manners and customs, Social life and customs, Historical Fiction