Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Vast and crowded, rich in irony and suspense, Middlemarch is richer still in character, with two of the era's most enduring characters, Dorothea Brooke, trapped in a loveless marriage, and Lydgate, an ambitious young doctor.

The Mysteries of Udolpho (Penguin Classics)

The Mysteries of Udolpho (Penguin Classics)

by Ann Ward Radcliffe, Terry Castle

With The Mysteries of Udolpho , Ann Radcliffe raised the Gothic romance to a new level and inspired a long line of imitators. Portraying her heroine's inner life, creating a thick atmosphere of fear, and providing a gripping plot that continues to thrill readers today, The Mysteries of Udolpho is the story of orphan Emily St. Aubert, who finds herself separated from the man she loves and confined within the... (more)

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, described by G. K. Chesterton as a “study in human weakness and the slow human surrender,” may be called Charles Dickens ’s finest moment in a remarkably illustrious literary career. In an overgrown churchyard, a grizzled convict springs upon an orphan named Pip. The convict terrifies the young boy and threatens to kill him unless Pip helps further his escape. Later, Pip finds himself in the... (more)

Northanger Abbey

by Jane Austen

As she moves through the social whirl in the city of Bath and in the pleasant county seat of Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland's head is filled with the gothic fantasies of Mrs. Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho .

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Tags: 19th century english literature