18 books like Vanity Fair
Mapp and Lucia (Make Way for Lucia, Part 4)
Meet Mapp and Luciatwo of the most unpleasant, disgraceful women you're ever likely to encounter, in E.F. Benson's carefully observed tale of 1930s village life and social ranking Emmeline Lucas (known as Lucia to her friends) is emerging from mourning following the death of her husband. Pretentious, snobbish, and down-right devious, she feels her hometown of Riseholme offers no challenges and…
Shares: Female friendship, Social classes, Women, Classics
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, British and irish fiction, England
The Law and the Lady
Three years ago, her husband stood accused of murder -- and the verdict that came in from the jury was the Scottish Verdict, Not Proven. The jury had not evidence enough to convict him
-- nor enough to comfortably exonerate him. Eustace could not bear the weight of her discovery; he fled to the continent, to live in anonymity. But Valeria knew her husband, and she loved him. She knew he was…
Shares: Married women, Married people, British and irish fiction, Women
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,…
Shares: Married women, Married people, Women
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, British and irish fiction, England
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: Married people, British, British and irish fiction, Friendship
Young Wives
Three thirty-something women, all betrayed by their husbands, bind together for friendship and revenge.
Shares: Married women, Female friendship, Women
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: Female friendship, British and irish fiction, Classics, England
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, British, British and irish fiction
Wives and Daughters
The story is about Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a widowed doctor living in a provincial English town in the 1830s.
Shares: Social classes, British and irish fiction, Women, England
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 women, Married people, British and irish fiction, England
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: British and irish fiction, Women, England, Social life and customs
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, Married people, England, Social life and customs
Women in Love
Dark, but filled with bright genius, Women in Love is a prophetic masterpiece steeped in eroticism, filled with perceptions about sexual power and obsession that have proven to be timeless and true.
Shares: Social classes, British and irish fiction, Women, Classics
The Pool in the Desert
A collection of stories by Sara Jeannette Duncan. In The Pool in the Desert, first published in 1903, Sara Jeannette Duncan explores the impact of isolation on the small British communities of Victorian India.
Shares: British, Women, Classics, Social life and customs
The fortunate mistress, or, Roxana
"Roxana", Defoe's last and darkest novel, is the autobiography of a woman who has traded her virtue, at first for survival, and then for fame and fortune. Its narrator tells the story of her own "wicked" life as the mistress of rich and powerful men.
Shares: British and irish fiction, Women, England, History
My Ántonia
My Antonia, first published 1918, is one of Willa Cather's greatest works. It is the last novel in the Prairie trilogy, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark.My Antonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named Antonia. The…
Shares: Married women, Classics, Friendship, History
Grand avenue
"Looking back, it seemed like paradise; lives filled with the blessings of friendship, marriage, children, and career. For twenty years, four friends, Chris, Barbara, Susan, and Vicki shared everything through good times and bad, and faced the challenges of life and love head-on. Now, one sits alone to ponder the strange twists and turns of fate and circumstance. Now, she must sift through each…
Shares: Female friendship, Women, Friendship