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Hester (1883) is a dramatic story of female power and family tensions within Victorian society. Using her own money, Catherine Vernon manages to save the family bank from collapse after her cousin John absconds with some of its money. As the matriarch of Redborough, Catherine is used to commanding authority, but this is challenged with the arrival of John’s strong and capable teenage daughter, Hester. Ignorant of her father’s conduct, Hester takes against Catherine and a mutual antipathy soon sets in. A masterpiece of domestic realism, the novel is one of Mrs Oliphant’s most admired works.

Frugal and fearsome, Horace Lamb rules his household with whimsical tirades and oppressive sarcasm. While his wife and five children shiver through the cold months and live in quiet dread, the shrewd Bullivant maintains a sharp servant’s grip on all situations. When Horace transforms overnight to be considerate and caring, chaos ensues–and at the heart of the turmoil are the servants, who watch, scheme and survive as the family’s grievances spill out.

Breaking a long silence, Oliver, a young Englishman, writes to his elder brother, Patrick. Oliver, the idealistic younger brother, is living in a Hindu monastery and has decided to take his final monastic vows. Patrick, a successful, long-married publisher, newly in love with a boy in Los Angeles, decides to visit Oliver to persuade him not to renounce the world.

In the stifling confines of Edwardian Yorkshire, Muriel Hammond is waiting for her life to begin. Marriage, respectability, duty–these are all part of the script–but just as she believes that ‘men do as they like’ while women ‘wait to see what they will do’, she dreams of a life beyond those boundaries. As war transforms the village of Marshington and friends slot into their expected roles, Muriel needs courage to reframe her sad fate as a ‘surplus woman’ and look towards her own independent future.

Zola’s La Terre (The Earth) proved highly controversial on publication in 1887 and still retains the power to shock. It follows the fortunes of the Fouan family in the years leading up to the Franco-Prussian War. Old Fouan, the patriarch, draws up a legal contract to divide his farmland between his three children in exchange for an allowance that will support him and his wife through a comfortable retirement.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989, Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of Billi, a girl growing up in Europe between the two World Wars. Upon the death of her German baron father, Billi moves from the family château to live with her vibrant and erratic English mother on the French Riviera. From there she is sent for schooling in England, where she lives an itinerant life, boarding among a bohemian crowd, attending galleries and public lectures, and reading some of the greatest books of the era.

Lucy Entwhistle and Everard Wemyss, both recovering from recent unhappiness, meet and quickly fall in love. However, over their new-found bliss looms the spectre of Vera, Wemyss’s first wife who died in mysterious circumstances. After their wedding the couple return home and Lucy really does begin to be troubled by what happened to Vera. Considered a high-water mark by the author, the story is an extraordinarily black vision of a young wife who gradually begins to understand that her husband will accept nothing less than total intellectual and emotional servitude.

Young, attractive and wealthy, Alice Vavasor is a woman in the prime of her life. And yet one question torments her: "What should a woman do with her life?" Torn between the kind but dull Mr. Grey and her dangerous and exciting cousin George, she is prone to constant indecision and uncertainty, much to the detriment of Mr. Grey. Can You Forgive Her? is a crisp and engaging novel, brimming with romance, humor, and pathos. It is the first of six in Trollope's celebrated Palliser series.

William Dorrit has been a resident of the Marshalsea debtors prison for so many years that he has gained the nickname "The Father of the Marshalsea". However, his suffering is eased by his close bond with youngest daughter Amy, or "Little Dorrit". The dashing Arthur Clennam, returning to London after many years in China, enters their lives and the Dorrits' fortunes begin to rise and fall. A biting satirical work on the shortcomings of 19th-century government and society.

One of the great novels of 19th-century France, Flaubert draws a deeply-felt but sympathetic portrait of a woman who, having warned a country doctor and found herself unhappy with a rural, genteel existence, longs for love and excitement. Her aspirations and her desires lead her into a tragic spiral downwards.

Maggie Tulliver has two lovers: Philip Wakem, son of her father's enemy; and Stephen Guest, already promised to her cousin; but the love she wants most in the world is that of her brother Tom. Maggie's struggle against her passionate and sensual nature leads her to a deeper understanding and to eventual tragedy.

When the liberal government falls and neither party is able to form a cabinet, Plantagenet Palliser is called upon to lead a coalition government. He is reluctant at first, and displays none of the charisma of his predecessors, but eventually he grows into the role. However, his confidence is short-lived as he becomes embroiled in a scandal involving the villainous Ferdinand Lopez - unintentionally brought about by Lady Glencora Palliser. Pronounced "a beautiful book" by Leo Tolstoy, The Prime Minister is a superb portrait of marriage and politics.

The scene is 1920s Kensington and Philip and Joan are testing the very limits of politeness and restraint as they fight to expunge the oppression of their mother–by whatever means necessary. In his first novel, Christopher Isherwood paints an intimate portrait of the battle between old and young as he explores the destruction of a son by a domineering parent.

Published in 1888, The Legacy of Cain is the last of Wilkie Collins’s completed novels. Two sisters, Helen and Eunice, are brought up by their father, Reverend Gracedieu. He has deliberately kept the girls in ignorance of their true ages, to disguise the fact that one of them was adopted after her birth mother was executed for the brutal murder of her husband. In time, both girls fall for the same man, Philip Dunboyne, but when he eventually chooses one of the sisters, events take a sinister turn.

Romance blossoms when Catherine, a 47-year-old widow, and the 25-year-old Christopher meet at repeated performances of a poorly attended play. However, 1920s London society is shocked by such a match, its disapproval shared by Catherine’s daughter and son-in-law, the curate Stephen. As events unfold, can their relationship survive the opprobrium of those around them as well as the disparity in their ages?