The Tennant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

  Anne Bronte's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was described as "coarse" and "brutal" at the time it was written (1848). Nineteenth century convention was that women belonged in the home, under their husbands thumb. (Indeed, the idiom "rule of thumb" comes from the law that a man could not beat his wife with anything thicker than his thumb). Bronte, however, goes against custom in this novel of perseverance and pride.

Villette by Charlotte Bronte

Villette is Charlotte Brontë's last novel, published in 1853. After an unspecified family disaster, protagonist Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school where she is unwillingly pulled into both adventure and romance. However, the novel is celebrated not so much for its plot as in its acute tracing of Lucy’s psychology, particularly Bronte’s use of Gothic doubling to represent externally what her protagonist is suffering internally.

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meagre income and assert her independence. But Agnes' enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable children and then with the painful disdain of the family. Anne Bronte's first novel offers a compelling personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried, educated women for whom becoming a governess was the only respectable career open in Victorian society.

 

Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy

Edward Bellamy's classic look at the future" Looking Backward 2000-1887" has been translated into over twenty languages and is the most widely read novel of its time. A young Boston gentleman is mysteriously transported from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century - from a world of war and want to one of peace and plenty. This brilliant vision became the blueprint of utopia that stimulated some of the greatest thinkers of our age.

London (Bloom's Literary Places)

Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Dickens are just a few of the London authors that have come to represent the essences of English literature. Taking you on a tour of the city with strong literary roots, the book examines it as it has appeared as a setting in various works of literature.