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Recommendations based on Barnaby Rudgeby Charles Dickens
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Little Dorrit
by Charles Dickens
A tale of injustice, exploring the social and economic inequalities of Victorian England.
The novel begins in Marseilles "thirty years ago" (c. 1826), with the notorious murderer Rigaud telling his prison cellmate John Baptist Cavalletto how he killed his wife, just prior to being ... (Wikipedia)
Dombey and Son
by Charles Dickens
A tale of loss, hardship, and redemption as a man learns to value family and relationships.
The story concerns Paul Dombey, the wealthy owner of the shipping company of the book's title, whose dream is to have a son to continue his business. The book begins when his son is born and Dombey's ... (Wikipedia)
Martin Chuzzlewit
by Charles Dickens
A satirical tale of a young man's trials and tribulations of greed, deception, and redemption.
Martin Chuzzlewit has been raised by his grandfather and namesake. Years before Martin senior took the precaution of raising an orphaned girl, Mary Graham, to be his companion and nursemaid, with the ... (Wikipedia)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
by Anne Brontë
An exploration of 19th-century gender roles, revealing a woman's struggle for independence.
The novel is divided into three volumes. Part One (Chapters 1 to 15): Gilbert Markham narrates how a mysterious widow, Mrs Helen Graham, arrives at Wildfell Hall, a nearby mansion. A source of ... (Wikipedia)
Kidnapped
by Robert Louis Stevenson
A young man's thrilling escape from kidnappers and the pursuit of justice.
The main character and narrator is 17-year-old David Balfour. (Balfour is Stevenson's mother's maiden name.) His parents have recently died, and he is out to make his way in the world. He is given a ... (Wikipedia)
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Epic tale of war, peace, and love, focusing on the lives of five aristocratic families.
The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg , at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna . Many of the main characters ... (Wikipedia)
The Woodlanders
by Thomas Hardy
A tale of love, betrayal, and social class in rural England. Follows the story of a young woman torn between two men.
The story takes place in a small woodland village called Little Hintock, and concerns the efforts of an honest woodsman, Giles Winterborne, to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. Although ... (Wikipedia)
Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen
Social satire exploring morality and class in 19th century England.
Fanny Price, at age ten, is sent from her impoverished home in Portsmouth to live as one of the family at Mansfield Park, the Northamptonshire country estate of her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram. There ... (Wikipedia)
Mort
by Terry Pratchett
A Discworld fantasy novel about a young man's journey to save a princess from a magical kingdom.
As a teenager, Mort has a personality and temperament that makes him unsuited to the family farming business. Mort's father Lezek takes him to a local hiring fair in the hope that Mort will land an ... (Wikipedia)
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
A grand narrative of life in a small English town, exploring the lives of its inhabitants.
Middlemarch centres on the lives of residents of Middlemarch, a fictitious Midlands town, from 1829 onwards – the years up to the 1832 Reform Act . The narrative is variably considered to consist of ... (Wikipedia)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
by Laurence Sterne
A satirical novel that follows the life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, a gentleman with a penchant for digressions and tangents.
»Wo ist der Mann von Geschmack, dessen Seele einen Sinn für die Launen des Genies, für Witz und Ironie, für attisches und britisches, cervantisches, rabelaissches und für yoricksches Salz hat und der ... (Goodreads)
The Overcoat
by Nikolai Gogol
A tale of a lowly bureaucrat's journey to reclaim his sense of self-worth.
The story narrates the life and death of titular councillor Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin (Russian: Акакий Акакиевич Башмачкин), an impoverished government clerk and copyist in the Russian capital of ... (Wikipedia)
Rose in Bloom
by Louisa May Alcott
A young woman's journey of faith and self-discovery, while struggling with societal expectations.
The story begins when Rose returns home from a long trip to Europe. Everyone has changed. As a joke, Rose lines up her seven cousins to take a long look at them, just as they did with her when they ... (Wikipedia)
Villette
by Charlotte Brontë
A young woman's journey of self-discovery in a foreign land, overcoming societal constraints.
Villette begins with its famously passive protagonist, Lucy Snowe, age 14, staying at the home of her godmother Mrs. Bretton in "the clean and ancient town of Bretton", in England. Also in residence ... (Wikipedia)
Of Human Bondage
by W. Somerset Maugham
A young man's struggles to find a sense of purpose, despite a series of catastrophic misfortunes.
The book begins with the death of Helen Carey, the much beloved mother of nine-year-old Philip Carey. Philip has a club foot and his father had died a few months before. Now orphaned, he is sent to ... (Wikipedia)
Shirley
by Charlotte Brontë
A young woman's turbulent journey to find her place in a restrictive society.
Robert Moore is a mill owner noted for apparent ruthlessness towards his employees. He has laid off many of them, and is apparently indifferent to their consequent impoverishment. In fact he had no ... (Wikipedia)
All My Sons
by Arthur Miller
A family drama about a man who sold faulty airplane parts during WWII, causing the death of 21 pilots. Emotions: Guilt, Betrayal, Grief, Anger. Topics: Family, Morality, Responsibility, War, Capitalism. Personality: Conscientious, Moralistic, Patriotic, Family-oriented. Desires: Justice, Redemption, Forgiveness, Honesty. Avoids: Dishonesty, Betrayal, Immorality.
Joe Keller and Herbert Deever, partners in a machine shop during the war, turned out defective airplane parts, causing the deaths of many men. Deever was sent to prison while Keller escaped ... (Goodreads)
The Far Pavilions
by M.M. Kaye
Epic adventure story set in 19th century India, exploring the clash of East and West.
Ashton Pelham-Martyn (Ash) is the son of a British botanist travelling through India; he is born on the road shortly before the Sepoy uprising of 1857 . His mother dies from childbed fever shortly ... (Wikipedia)
The Wings of the Dove
by Henry James
A tale of love and intrigue, as a young woman balances her desires against her moral obligations.
Kate Croy and Merton Densher are two betrothed Londoners who desperately want to marry but have very little money. Kate is constantly put upon by family troubles, and is now living with her ... (Wikipedia)
The Prisoner of Zenda
by Anthony Hope
A thrilling adventure of mistaken identity, political intrigue, and romance.
On the eve of the coronation of King Rudolf V of Ruritania, his younger half-brother Michael, Duke of Strelsau, has him drugged. The unconscious king is abducted and imprisoned in a castle in the ... (Wikipedia)
Far From the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy
A pastoral romance of love and redemption, set against the backdrop of 19th century rural England.
An ACE can be found here . 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 ... (Goodreads)
Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
A woman's journey of self-discovery in the Caribbean, her story of emancipation from the shadows of colonialism.
The novel, initially set in Jamaica, opens a short while after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 ended slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834. , The protagonist Antoinette relates the story of ... (Wikipedia)
Jude the Obscure
by Thomas Hardy
A tale of struggle and sorrow for a poor, uneducated man amid the rigid conventions of Victorian England.
The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England (part of Hardy's fictional county of Wessex ), who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on ... (Wikipedia)
Demons
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A fictional exploration of the human condition, examining the darker sides of our nature.
The novel is in three parts. There are two epigraphs, the first from Pushkin's poem "Demons" and the second from Luke 8:32–36. After an almost illustrious but prematurely curtailed academic career ... (Wikipedia)
Farmer Boy
by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Story of a young boy's life on a farm in 19th century America.
The novel is based on the childhood of Wilder's husband, Almanzo Wilder , who grew up in the 1860s near the town of Malone, New York . It covers roughly one year of his life, beginning just before ... (Wikipedia)
The Way We Live Now
by Anthony Trollope
A satirical tale of greed and corruption, set in the world of high society.
Augustus Melmotte is a financier with a mysterious past. He is rumoured to have Jewish origins, and to be connected to some failed businesses in Vienna. When he moves his business and his family to ... (Wikipedia)
The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A philosophical exploration of morality, faith, and family dynamics among a group of brothers.
The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich ... (Goodreads)
Barchester Towers
by Anthony Trollope
Social satire of Victorian England, exploring hypocrisy and ambition in a small cathedral town.
Barchester Towers concerns the leading clergy of the cathedral city of Barchester. The much loved bishop having died, all expectations are that his son, Archdeacon Grantly, will succeed him. Owing to ... (Wikipedia)
On the Banks of Plum Creek
by Laura Ingalls Wilder
A young family's adventures in the American Midwest, settling on a homestead.
Having left their little house on the Kansas prairie, the Ingalls family travels by covered wagon to Minnesota and settles on the banks of Plum Creek. Pa trades 2 ponies for a dugout and a stable. ... (Wikipedia)
In Dubious Battle
by John Steinbeck
A story of a labor strike and the power struggle between workers and landowners.
In Dubious Battle deals with a fruit-workers' strike in a California valley and the attempts of labor unions to organize, lead, and provide for the striking pickers. Jim Nolan meets Harry Nilson who ... (Wikipedia)
