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Dodo's Daughter

E. F. Benson
The second in the "Dodo" sequence of novels.
Green Rust, The (Version 2)

Wallace, Edgar
Edgar Wallace, perhaps best known for creating King Kong, wrote dozens of novels. The Green Rust, his twelfth crime novel, is one of three books he published in 1919. It begins at the English home of the severely ill American millionaire, John Millinborn. With him are his best friend, Kitson, and a local doctor, the Dutch (or is he?) van Heerden. He is murdered in the first chapter, having just left his fortune to his niece, Oliva, whom he has never met. Before he dies, he asks Kitson to find and watch over Oliva.
Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad

Baum, L. Frank
Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad is the second of the ten book series of Aunt Jane's Nieces. The story continues with the three much loved girls - the sweet and generous Patsy, the cunning Louise, and the sullen Beth. This time they're on a tour of Europe with their down-to-earth uncle John Merrick.

The benevolent uncle and his nieces meet mysterious and sinister Victor Valdi, his daughter Tato, and a pretend nobleman, Count Ferralti, who fancies Louise. The story revolves around travel and kidnapping, and the subsequent adventures of the three young girls, told in Baum's own inimitable style that keeps us at the edge of our seats.
Gone to Earth

Mary Webb
"Gone to Earth" is the cry of fox hunters as the fox takes to its den and they lose the chase. Here, Mary Webb tells the story of Hazel Woodus whose understanding of her half tame fox cub contrasts with her misunderstanding of humanity. She is pursued by two very different men, the Squire of the Manor and the local Minister. Mary Webb wrote this book in 1917 and it is set in rural Shropshire of the late 1800s.
Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others

John Kendrick Bangs
New York-born John Kendrick Bangs was associate editor and then editor of Life and Harper magazines, eventually finding his way into the Humour department. Here he began to write his own satire and humour. Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others is a delightfully humourous collection of short tales relating encounters with ghosts.
Non-Combatants and Others

Rose Macaulay
Through a variety of experiences of the effects of the First World War, an art student is drawn into pacifism. Rose Macaulay's satirical novel is passionate, and witty
Herb of Grace

Rosa Nouchette Carey
Malcolm Herrick has it all: he is a lawyer, he has no financial problems, and he has wonderful friends and even an adopted sister. He is a dutiful boy to his mother. He is a loving friend. But he wanted something else. He wanted to be a poet or an artist. He wanted a country home with more freedom. A home where he could really feel at home. He wanted someone to nurture and love him. Now, he wants Elizabeth Templeton, his best friend's sister. This book is about taking some of what you have, getting some of what you want, and fulfilling a few dreams.
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Rose Garden Husband

Margaret Widdemer
This novel was written by Margaret Widdemer, who won the Pulitzer prize for her collection of poetry in 1919. Phyllis is a 25-years-old children's librarian. She is good at her job. Yet when she sees a girl from her hometown with two children, she discovers she wants more. She marries an invalid who is expected to die. Would she find the love and sense of belonging she craves for? And would he really die?

Note: This book is in the public domain in the USA. The author died in 1978 so may still be protected by copyright in many other countries.
Heart's Kingdom

Maria Thompson Daviess
Nickols Powers is in love with the beautiful Charlotte and desperate to marry her. Charlotte however, is independent and reluctant to accept his religious views as a good wife should. However, she may still be convinced by the charismatic preacher building a new church in her own backyard
Mrs. Raffles

Bangs, John Kendrick
Mrs. Raffles, widow of the now deceased A. J. Raffles (who was the gentleman thief pursued at one time by Sherlock Holmes), continues the family legacy of crime—but this time in America. These stories are narrated by her cohort, Harry “Bunny” Manders, previously the devoted friend and sidekick of A.J. Raffles before his death.
Lady Rose's Daughter

Ward, Mrs. Humphry
"Julie Le Breton enchants almost everyone around her with her smart, charm, and excellent manners. She almost belongs to the English highest nobility, but just almost… Her parents, 2 aristocrats who ran away from England in order to be together, could never marry - because her mother was married to someone else. Therefore, she is forced to work for the cruel Lady Henry Delafield, who hates her. She has a few good friends, amongst whom are 2 admirers… And that is only the beginning. This is a compelling drama, set mostly in England, among the English aristocracy. By turns smart, funny and moving, it's the story of a strong and good woman- just trying to survive and make the correct choices. But sometimes, doing what is right doesn't make you happy. Only by giving up the man she loves, can Julie get the honorable place she deserves- beside a man whos strong love for her "saved" her.
This novel has been adapted for a play in Broadway in 1903 (the year in which it was published), and a silent film in 1920."
Summary by Stav Nisser.
Queechy

Susan Warner
Fleda Ringan is an 11 year old orphan who lives with her grandfather in Queechy, Vermont. After a tragic incident, Fleda has to live with her aunt in Paris, Mrs. Rossiter. She travels to Paris under the care of young Mr. Carleton and his mother, a rich Englishwomen. Every young man who meets Fleda loves her, but she adores only Mr. Carleton. Once Fleda's aunt Mrs. Rossiter looses all her money, they return to America where Fleda learns to farm and cook to support her family. Mr. Carleton is always around to help out but never utters a word about love to Fleda.
Coffee and Repartee

Bangs, John Kendrick
First released in 1893, Coffee And Repartee is a collection of breakfast chats at a gentlemans boarding house run by a Mrs. Smithers. Here these fellows repeatedly face questions and proclaimations of an inhabitant they call The Idiot. The discussions sound friendly under pretense, but are really sly battles of ribald wit and cunning charm, as well as rather offensive remarks during a time period considered by many to favour a height of refined etiquette. The Idiot spars well, but will the other residents get the better of him?
Lone Wolf

Louis Joseph Vance
The Lone Wolf is the first of eight books in a series featuring the jewel thief turned private detective Michael Lanyard. With his identity betrayed and the police on his heels, he must fly from Paris, which is made much more difficult by his self-imposed duty to take care of the beautiful Lucia, who has a dark secret of her own...
A large number of movies have been based on the books.
Ordeal of Richard Feverel

George Meredith
After his wife's desertion, Sir Austin wants to bring up his son according to a strict educational system governing every aspect of his life. However Richard has to make his own mistakes, fall in love, and generally live his own life. This book tells about the clashes between Richard's wish to govern his own life to his father's constant interference. This book was very influential. The leading libraries of the day considered it too frank and sexually explicit and refused to buy it. Later authors including E. M. Forster, Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf admired and respected it.
Flaming Youth

Samuel Hopkins Adams
This book tells the story of the Fentriss sisters and their mother. They are educated and rich. They live in a suburb. They are looking for love. Their quest for love leads them to many different places. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about it: "the novel persuaded certain moralistic people that a woman could be seduced without being immoral". It was scandalous for the time because of the frank descriptions of sexuality and relationships. Yet to the modern readers it may seem as if someone wrote this book only a few years ago. The author was a well respected journalist and novelist. This book was so "risky" for him that he published it under a pen name. It is recommended to those who wish to learn about the Jazz age, about the new woman (as she is seen by a man) and about a discourse which was completely new at the time.
Gargoyles

Hecht, Ben
The author, Ben Hecht, was a prolific writer as well as a renowned screenwriter, producer, and director of films. His screenwriting skills include some of the most popular films of Hollywood's golden era, including "Gone With the Wind", "Wuthering Heights", "Spellbound", and "Scarface", to name but a few.
Hecht had already established himself as a novelist and an author of short stories when "Gargoyles" was published. "Gargoyles" delves deep into the psyches of individuals and of their relationships within social classes, revealing both the darker sides and the sentimental sides. Sometimes the characteristics, values and ethics of his characters are altered over time, as they (sometimes unwittingly) look within themselves and acknowledge what they valued most, how their egos affect their decisions and ethics, yet not always understanding the reasons those values are so crucial to them. What we learn is the results of these changes, as we center on the lives of George Basine, his friends, and his family, and most importantly, the masks that each wore.
Lovels of Arden

Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The novel traces the return of a young Englishwoman from several years of schooling abroad, to find that her life will not take up where she thought it would. Clarissa Lovel faced not only an emotionally and financially bereft father, but her first glimpse at love - and that not from the best vantage point.
Gentle Julia

Tarkington, Booth
Penrod for girls in the form of Florence, the bratty younger cousin of luminous Julia Atwater, enlivens this romantic comedy set in Tarkington's Indiana of the early 20th Century.
Mary Louise

L. Frank Baum
The Bluebird Books is a series of novels popular with teenage girls in the 1910s and 1920s. The series was begun by L. Frank Baum using his Edith Van Dyne pseudonym,then continued by at least three others, all using the same pseudonym. Baum wrote the first four books in the series, possibly with help from his son, Harry Neal Baum, on the third.

The books are concerned with adolescent girl detectives— a concept Baum had experimented with earlier, in The Daring Twins (1911) and Phoebe Daring (1912). The Bluebird series began with Mary Louise, originally written as a tribute to Baum's favorite sister, Mary Louise Baum Brewster. Baum's publisher, Reilly & Britton, rejected that manuscript, apparently judging the heroine too independent. Baum wrote a new version of the book; the original manuscript is lost.

The title character is Mary Louise Burrows. In the first books of the series, she is a fifteen-year-old girl with unusual maturity (though the other girls in her boarding school find her somewhat priggish). She is suddenly confronted with the fact that her beloved grandfather is suspected of no less a crime than treason against the United States. With the help of old and new friends of Mary Louise … the truth is uncovered. The novel features a federal agent named John O'Gorman; he is assisted by his daughter Josie, a young woman he has himself trained to function as an investigator. (The Josie O'Gorman character, despite preceding Nancy Drew by more than a decade, is much less traditionally feminine.)
Dodo Wonders

E. F. Benson
"Dodo Wonders" is the third and last of the "Dodo" novels by E.F. Benson, author of the "Mapp and Lucia" series as well as numerous stand-alone novels and short stories. Dodo was rumored to be based on Lady Margot Asquith; when questioned about it, Lady Asquith reportedly replied that Benson had taken nothing from her for the character of Dodo "except her drawing-room."

"Dodo Wonders" takes Benson's characters, the glittering socialite Lady Dodo Chesterford, her husband, and friends into World War I-era England. The story follows Dodo and her peers through the build-up, outbreak, and catastrophic years of the war. Benson is clever as always in putting his characters in situations where they must either adapt or break and never loses his sense of humor while doing it. "Dodo Wonders" manages to be as cheerful and bubbly as the other novels in the series while retaining a basic sense of sobriety about its subject matter.

Dodo is a charming, vivid heroine with whom it becomes almost a pleasure to move through wartime.
Mr. Incoul's Misadventure

Edgar Saltus
Saltus has been compared to Oscar Wilde for wit and language. His novels are entertaining, yet philosophical, exposing the vagaries of human nature. The publishers promoted Mr. Incoul's Misadventure thus: "A novel which is sure to be condemned by every one who prefers platitude to paradox, or tea and toast to truffles and red pepper."
Channings

Mrs. Henry Wood
This is a saga about life in a small town in England during the Victorian era. The "stars" of this saga are the Channings. Mr. Channing was ill and, because of his poverty, his six children have to work. Many things happen during this saga: a man confesses to a theft which he thinks his brother did, a lady is engaged to a gentleman much above her station, and so much more. But in the middle of all this you can find plenty of family love.
Pelle the Conqueror, Volume 1

Martin Andersen Nexø
When the first part of "Pelle Erobreren" (Pelle the Conqueror) appeared in 1906, its author, Martin Andersen Nexo, was practically unknown even in his native country, save to a few literary people who knew that he had written some volumes of stories and a book full of sunshiny reminiscences from Spain. And even now, after his great success with "Pelle," very little is known about the writer. He was born in 1869 in one of the poorest quarters of Copenhagen, but spent his boyhood in his beloved island Bornholm, in the Baltic, in or near the town, Nexo, from which his final name is derived. There, too, he was a shoemaker's apprentice, like Pelle in the second part of the book, which resembles many great novels in being largely autobiographical. Later, he gained his livelihood as a bricklayer, until he somehow managed to get to one of the most renowned of our "people's high-schools," where he studied so effectually that he was enabled to become a teacher, first at a provincial school, and later in Copenhagen.

"Pelle" consists of four parts, each, except perhaps the last, a complete story in itself. First we have the open-air life of the boy in country surroundings in Bornholm; then the lad's apprenticeship in a small provincial town not yet invaded by modern industrialism and still innocent of socialism; next the youth's struggles in Copenhagen against employers and authorities; and last the man's final victory in laying the foundation of a garden-city for the benefit of his fellow-workers. The background everywhere is the rapid growth of the labor movement; but social problems are never obtruded, except, again, in the last part, and the purely human interest is always kept well before the reader's eye through variety of situation and vividness of characterization. The great charm of the book seems to me to lie in the fact that the writer knows the poor from within; he has not studied them as an outsider may, but has lived with them and felt with them, at once a participant and a keen-eyed spectator. He is no sentimentalist, and so rich is his imagination that he passes on rapidly from one scene to the next, sketching often in a few pages what another novelist would be content to work out into long chapters or whole volumes. His sympathy is of the widest, and he makes us see tragedies behind the little comedies, and comedies behind the little tragedies, of the seemingly sordid lives of the working people whom he loves. "Pelle" has conquered the hearts of the reading public of Denmark; there is that in the book which should conquer also the hearts of a wider public than that of the little country in which its author was born.(Introductory note to English translation - Otto Jespersen, 1913)
Spoilers

Rex Beach
Rex Beach was born in Atwood, Michigan to a prominent family and pursued a career as a lawyer before being drawn to Alaska at the time of the Klondike Gold Rush. After five years of unsuccessful prospecting, he turned to writing. His first novel, The Spoilers, was based on a true story of corrupt government officials stealing gold mines from prospectors, which Beach witnessed while he was prospecting in Nome, Alaska. The novel begins with the return of Dextry and Roy Glenister to Nome to reclaim their mine, The Midas. On their arrival, they find “The Law” has come to Nome. The problem is “The Law” is crooked, bent on stealing all the best gold mines in Alaska. Alec McNamara is the villain in this novel and rules with a heavy hand through the aging and corrupt Judge Stillman. Helen Chester is the naïve niece of Judge Stillman. She cannot believe her uncle is involved in such treachery. And of course, Roy Glenister is in love with her. After trying to work within the law, the miners eventually form a vigilante group called The Stranglers to right the wrongs while Glenister continues to believe the law can correct the wrongs. A cast of other characters enter the book with various roles; Cherry Malotte, The Bronco Kid (who has a surprise in store for listeners), Slapjack Sims, Struve the crooked lawyer. The climax of the book is…………but then I would be spoiling the ending, wouldn’t I? The Spoilers became one of the bestselling novels of 1906. The novel was made into movies five times, with leading men including Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott and John Wayne.
Girls of St. Wode's

L. T. Meade
This is a story about the life of a school girl. The story centres around the girls' college of St. Wode's, Wingfield. This is the place in all England where women who wish to distinguish themselves should go to receive training. The girls come from all classes of society, but the tale centres chiefly around the doings of the Gilroy girls and their benefactor, Mr. Parker.
Samuel the Seeker

Upton Sinclair
What would happen to you if you tried to make your way in the world believing all the clear, simple things you had ever been taught growing up? Here we have one response to that question, a commentary by the great novelist, journalist and political activist Upton Sinclair, on what we are to encounter as we make our way in this world we live in. It is set against the backdrop of its time (about a hundred years ago) and place (a capitalist microcosm called "Lockmanville" in upstate New York) and the viewpoint of its author. Young Samuel Prescott, having been robbed penniless, encounters the expected cast of characters, from the fiendish and jaded Capitalists to the sainted Socialists, with the righteous religious and the purchased politicians and police along the way, all perched upon the backs and shoulders of the poor and the powerless. But we can all find ourselves in here somewhere, and seek for the truth and the way forward.
Lady of the Basement Flat

Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
A naive young girl strikes out on her own and ends up leading a double life in this engaging tale of love lost and found. Summary by Judi Mason
Tom Ossington's Ghost

Richard Marsh
Madge and Ella have lived at Clover Cottage for six weeks when a series of strange events begin to occur. A gentleman who arrives asking for a piano lesson from Madge, suddenly bolts out the back door and over the hedge when he sees a rough-looking character watching him from the street in front of the cottage. This man in turn, runs away when he sees a shabbily dressed woman come around the corner. The woman, marches into the cottage, declaring that the cottage is haunted, and she is the wife of the ghost! An attempted burglary, and a cryptic note left at the scene, just add to the mystery.
Toppleton's Client

Bangs, John Kendrick
A pre-eminent legal firm gets far more than it bargained for when it hires the son of its late senior partner, Hopkins Toppleton, Sr., simply to retain the illustrious family name on the company masthead. Knowing Jr. is a loose cannon, their strategy is to pack him off to the UK to head up a European branch of the firm - a branch they have no intention of sending work. The unwitting Hopkins Toppleton, Jr. is, however, determined to make his mark.
Bent Twig

Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Semi-autobiographical series of incidents in the life of an intellectual American family in the late 19th - early 20th Century as seen by favored daughter, Sylvia Marshall. Her father is an economics professor in a Midwestern state university and she is following in his inquisitive footsteps. Canfield writes this in a matter-of-fact manner with Tarkingtonesque good humor.
Flood Tide

Bassett, Sara Ware
Willie Spence may have been a bit eccentric by most standards, but he had a knack for creating gadgets in his small workshop at his home on Cape Cod. Whenever he was 'ketched' by an 'idee' he had to see it to completion, and always did. His small cottage on the Cape had become a labyrinth of string and wires tacked here and there so as to make life a bit challenging for his housekeeper Celestina. But she and most everyone else among the coastal towns and villages loved the old man for all his eccentricities as Willie spent his waning years just waiting for his ship to come in.
Aunt Jane's Nieces

L. Frank Baum
Jane Merrick is a wealthy, elderly, difficult invalid woman who is preparing for her approaching death. In her youth, she inherited her money and estate from her fiancé, Thomas Bradley, who died before their wedding took place. With no children of her own, she calls for her three teenaged nieces to visit her, so she can decide who will inherit her estate. They are Louise Merrick, Elizabeth De Graf, and Patsy Doyle, children of Jane's younger brother and sisters. Each of the three cousins is a different type.
Opal Serpent

Fergus Hume
An old pawnbroker is found strangled with his lips pinned together with an opal serpent broach. He has a beautiful daughter who is apparently the heir of his large estate. But another claimant has made herself known as the actual daughter of the pawnbroker. Follow detective Hurd as he unravels the convoluted mystery of the old man’s death and attempts to determine who is the rightful heir.
Guest of Quesnay

Booth Tarkington
This is the story of two young American painters residing in Paris in a moderate way. Others are more flamboyant than them, for example Larrabee Harman, whose life is one continuous scandal, one of which involved the cousin of one of the painters. Observing him one evening on the Boulevard in the company of a famous dancer, the next day we meet him again: Victim of a car accident, carried to the hospital, not expected to live. But his life is tied to the lives of the two painters in odd ways...
Northwest!

Bindloss, Harold
Northwest! takes place in western Canada, primarily western Alberta and British Columbia. The story revolves around Jimmy not being sure whether or not he shot and killed a Northwest Mounted while he and some friends were out hunting one day. Not exactly a bushman, he needs to head northwest to avoid capture by the officials who are out to find him and bring him to trial. At least that's what he suspects. Survival in the wilderness for one who was raised in British class proves to be a daunting experience, and we learn of the trials he is to be put through while he is on the lam.
Way of the Wind, The

Norris, Zoe Anderson
From the comfort of the hills of Kentucky traveled Celia and her husband Seth to the desolate prairies of Kansas, where cyclones, tornadoes, and endless wind were to greet them. Always, there was the wind cutting across the plains as the young couple builds their home while working the soil, while Seth awaits the wise men of the east to begin building the magic city where he has staked his territory on the plains.
But sometimes life plays cruel tricks upon us. Sometimes our hopes are dashed by happenstance. Sometimes our greatest dreams born of purest intentions become our deepest tragedies. All too often we seek the calmness and serenity in life only to learn that we have inadvertently walked directly into The Way of the Wind.
Tommy and Grizel

J. M. Barrie
This book continues Sentimental Tommy, also in the Librivox catalogue. Tommy grows up and marries Grizel. But life is not only roses and rainbows. This book has all the elements of a good love story, but it is also a book about growing up and finding out your distinct voice in the world.
Red Money

Fergus Hume
Greed and lost love collide to create dark secrets. Through twists and turns, corrupt aristocrats let family and honor overshadow love and true happiness. In the end, evil passes and good endures.
Coxon Fund

Henry James
This novella explores the relationship between Frank Saltram, a charismatic speaker who is also a freeloader; Ruth Anvoy, a young American who visits her widowed aunt, Lady Coxon, an American who married a Brit; and George Gravener, a British intellectual with a future in politics who becomes engaged to Ms. Anvoy. The story revolves around the dispersal of The Coxon Fund, a sum of money left by Ms. Anvoy’s father with the stipulation that is be given to a great man to publish and pursue moral truth.
Tragic Bride

Francis Brett Young
The story centers on Gabrielle Hewish, only and lonely child of Sir Jocelyn Hewish, a loveable lush and owner of the peaceful Roscarna estate nestled in the Irish countryside. In due course, young Gabrielle falls in love with a Navy man whose untimely demise sends her into a depression, and the consequences of which alter her future, culminating in a fascinating and quite unpredictable relationship with Mrs. Payne and her troubled son Arthur. A story of understanding in it's finest sense and aptly titled, The Tragic Bride is both interesting as a story and telling as a character study.
Dubliners (Version 2)

James Joyce
Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character experiences self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses. The initial stories in the collection are narrated by child protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This is in line with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence, and maturity.
Middlemarch (version 2)

George Eliot
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and then put aside during the final illness of Thornton Lewes, the son of her companion George Henry Lewes. During the following year Eliot resumed work, fusing together several stories into a coherent whole, and during 1871–72 the novel appeared in serial form. The first one-volume edition was published in 1874, and attracted large sales. Subtitled "A Study of Provincial Life," the novel is set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch during the period 1830–32. It has multiple plots with a large cast of characters, and in addition to its distinct though interlocking narratives it pursues a number of underlying themes, including the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism and self-interest, religion and hypocrisy, political reform, and education. The pace is leisurely, the tone is mildly didactic (with an authorial voice that occasionally bursts through the narrative), and the canvas is very broad.
Hard Times (version 2 dramatic reading)

Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens' 1854 novel opens with the philosophy of education espoused by the eminently practical Mr. Gradgrind, who prizes "facts and calculations." He raises his children, most prominently Louisa and Tom, to eschew imagination and emotion and embrace order and reason. The results are disastrous: Louisa marries out of duty to the supposed self-made man Mr. Bounderby, while Tom grows up dissolute, ultimately commits theft and blames it on an unfortunate laborer, Stephen Blackpool. Set in the fictional Coketown, a mill town in the north of England, Dickens' novel satirizes capitalism, social mobility, class stratification, and Utilitarianism. This dramatic reading of the novel features a full cast of Volunteers, who lend their voices to Dickens' vibrant comic characters.
Hard Times

Charles Dickens
Hard Times, the shortest of Dickens's full-length novels, is set in the fictitious Victorian-England city of Coketown, where facts are the rule and all fancy is to be stamped out. The plot centers around the men and women of the town, some of whom are beaten down by the city's utilitarian ideals and some of whom manage to rise above it. The novel was written in 1854 and was a scathing attack on then-current ideas of utilitarianism, which Dickens viewed as a selfish and at times oppressive philosophy. Perhaps the novel's best features are its clever, ironic narration and the larger-than-life characters that push the plot forward, such as the upper-class banker and hypocritical braggart, Josiah Bounderby, and the fact-driven schoolmaster, Thomas Gradgrind.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (version 3)

Thomas Hardy
"Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented" is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British illustrated newspaper, The Graphic. Though now considered an important work of English literature, the book received mixed reviews when it first appeared, in part because it challenged the sexual mores of Hardy's day. The original manuscript is on display at the British Library, showing that it was originally titled "Daughter of the d'Urbervilles."
Age of Innocence (Dramatic Reading)

Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence centers on an upper-class couple's impending marriage, and the introduction of a woman plagued by scandal whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870s' New York society, it never devolves into an outright condemnation of the institution. In fact, Wharton considered this novel an "apology" for her earlier, more brutal and critical novel, The House of Mirth. Not to be overlooked is Wharton's attention to detailing the charms and customs of the upper caste. The novel is lauded for its accurate portrayal of how the 19th-century East Coast American upper class lived, and this, combined with the social tragedy, earned Wharton a Pulitzer Prize — the first Pulitzer awarded to a woman. Edith Wharton was 58 years old at publication; she lived in that world, and saw it change dramatically by the end of World War I. The title is an ironic comment on the polished outward manners of New York society, when compared to its inward machinations.
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, The, Vol. 1

Sterne, Laurence
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or, more briefly, Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. It was not always held in high esteem by other writers (Samuel Johnson responded that, "Nothing odd can last"), but its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices.
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, The, Vol. 2

Sterne, Laurence
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or, more briefly, Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. It was not always held in high esteem by other writers (Samuel Johnson responded that, "Nothing odd can last"), but its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices.
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, The, Vol. 4

Sterne, Laurence
This is volume 4 of 4. -- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or, more briefly, Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. It was not always held in high esteem by other writers (Samuel Johnson responded that, "Nothing odd can last"), but its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices.
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