Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Touted by its 1885 publisher as “the most amazing story ever written,” King Solomon’s Mines was one of the bestselling novels of the nineteenth century. H. Rider Haggard’s thrilling saga of elephant hunter Allan Quatermain and his search for fabled treasure is more than just an adventure story, though: As Alexandra Fuller explains in her Introduction, in its vivid portrayal of the alliances and battles of white... (more)

The Haunted Hotel

by Wilkie Collins

This is perhaps Collins’ last lucid effort before ill health and opium drained his powers. A tale of ghostly terror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed Countess characterize and distinguish this powerful Collins novelette.

New Grub Street

by George Gissing

In "New Grub Street" George Gissing re-created a microcosm of London's literary society as he had experienced it. His novel is at once a major social document and a story that draws us irresistibly into the twilit world of Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist, and his friends and acquaintances in Grub Street including Jasper Milvain, an ambitious journalist, and Alfred Yule, an embittered critic. Here Gissing... (more)

King Solomon's Mines (Penguin Popular Classics)

King Solomon's Mines (Penguin Popular Classics)

by H. Rider Haggard

Three men trek to the remote African interior in search of a lost friend - and reach, at the end of a perilous journey, an unknown land cut off from the world, where terrible dangers threaten anyone who ventures near the spectacular diamond mines of King Solomon...

The Eustace Diamonds (The Centenary Edition of Anthony Trollope's Palliser Novels)

The Eustace Diamonds (The Centenary Edition of Anthony Trollope's Palliser Novels)

by Anthony Trollope

The third novel in Trollope’s Palliser series, The Eustace Diamonds bears all the hallmarks of his later works, blending dark cynicism with humor and a keen perception of human nature. Following the death of her husband, Sir Florian, beautiful Lizzie Eustace mysteriously comes into possession of a hugely expensive diamond necklace. She maintains it was a gift from her husband, but the Eustace lawyers... (more)

Miss Marjoribanks (Penguin Classics)

by Oliphant

The esteemed English critic Q. D. Leavis declared Margaret Oliphant's heroine Lucilla to be the "missing link" in nineteenth-century literature between Jane Austen's Emma and George Eliot's Dorothea Brooke, and "more entertaining, more impressive, and more likeable than either." Miss Marjoribanks is perhaps the most famous novel in The Chronicles of Carlingford --Oliphant's popular series of short stories and... (more)

Hunted Down: The Detective Stories of Charles Dickens

Hunted Down: The Detective Stories of Charles Dickens

by Charles Dickens

One might not necessarily think of Dickens as a mystery writer, but detectives and criminals do figure into much of his work. This...gathers a dozen of his stories featuring cops of one kind or another.""-Library Journal

The Far Islands and Other Cold Places: Travel Essays of a Victorian Lady

The Far Islands and Other Cold Places: Travel Essays of a Victorian Lady

by Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor (1856 - 1932) was a travel writer entranced by the Northern climes. Her visits to Iceland, Canada, Norway and, above all, the Faroe Islands, resulted in the essays contained in this book. Her original writings were passed around for year and eventually were given to her great-grandnephew who organized them and even visited some of the places Elizabeth wrote about. There are 39 articles from... (more)

The Nether World

by George Gissing, Stephen Gill, Stephen Charles Gill

The Nether World (1889), generally regarded as the finest of Gissing's early novels, is a highly dramatic, sometimes violent tale of man's caustic vision shaped by the bitter personal experience of poverty. This tale of intrigue depicts life among the artisans, factory-girls, and slum-dwellers, documenting an inescapable world devoid of sentimentality and steeped with people scheming and struggling to survive. ... (more)

Queen Victoria

by G. Lytton Strachey

Insights into the political eras of various Prime Ministers as well as the significance of the Prince Consort and the period of widowhood.

King Solomon's Mines (Oxford World's Classics)

King Solomon's Mines (Oxford World's Classics)

by H. Rider Haggard

H. Rider Haggard clearly displays his wonderfully dramatic imagination, combined with his deep knowledge of Africa, in King Solomon's Mines, which recounts the adventures of Allan Quartermain, Sir Henry Curtis, and Captain John Good. Written in 1885, the book was hailed by his publishers as "THE MOST AMAZING BOOK EVER WRITTEN."

The Mayor of Casterbridge

The Life and Death of a Man of Character

by Thomas Hardy

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wilson.

Cranford / Cousin Phillis

by Elizabeth Gaskell

Gaskell’s witty and poignant comedy of country town life A gently comic picture of life in an English country town in the mid-nineteenth century, Cranford describes the small adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle- aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances. Rich with humor and filled with vividly memorable characters—including the dignified Lady... (more)

Trilby

by George Du Maurier

In the Latin Quarter of Paris, Trilby O'Ferrall - graceful, charming and innocent - is working as an artist's model. Her ingenuous nature makes her the perfect prey for the cruel magnetism of the demonic musician Svengali, under whose spell she falls. Using hypnotic powers Svengali shapes her into a virtuoso singer and soon she becomes Europe's most captivating soprano. But her golden voice, and even her life,... (more)

Basil

by Wilkie Collins

In Basil's secret and unconsummated marriage to the linen-draper's sexually precocious daughter, and the shocking betrayal, insanity, and death that follow, Collins reveals the bustling, commercial London of the nineteenth century wreaking its vengeance on a still powerful aristocratic world. Contemporary reviewers vehemently disapproved of this explicit treatment of adultery; and even today the passionate and... (more)

Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

In Uncle Silas , Sheridan Le Fanu's most celebrated novel, Maud Ruthyn, the young, naïve heroine, is plagued by Madame de la Rougierre from the moment the enigmatic older woman is hired as her governess. A liar, bully, and spy, when Madame leaves the house, she takes her dark secret with her. But when Maud is orphaned, she is sent to live with her Uncle Silas, her father's mysterious brother and a man with a... (more)

Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book and Household Guide

Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book and Household Guide

by Isabella Mary Beeton

She was the 19th century's Martha Stewart, and she is responsible for organizing the rules of domestic life into the first easy-to-follow guide. British writer ISABELLA MARY BEETON (1836-1865) caused a sensation in 1861 when she published her guide to proper Victorian housekeeping, known under various unofficial titles, including Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management. Eminently browsable and still highly... (more)

Domestic Manners of the Americans (A Vintage Book)

Domestic Manners of the Americans (A Vintage Book)

by Frances Milton Trollope

Published in 1832, the book presents a lively portrait of early 19th-century America as observed by a woman of rare intelligence and keen perception. Trollope left no stone unturned, commenting on American dress, food, speech, politics, manners, customs, the landscape, architecture, and more — often critically but always with considerable insight and literary flair.

East Lynne (Broadview Literary Texts)

by Henry Wood

East Lynne is the story of Lady Isabel Carlyle, beautiful, refined, and young, who leaves her respectable husband and her infant children to elope with a suitor. Bearing their illegitimate child after he has deserted her, she then returns in disguise to become a governess in the household of her husband and his new wife. The runaway bestseller of the 1860s, East Lynne brought Wood success, celebrity, and... (more)

Esther Waters: A Novel (The Collected Works of George Moore (21 Volumes))

Esther Waters: A Novel (The Collected Works of George Moore (21 Volumes))

by George Moore, David Skilton

Founded in 1906 by J.M. Dent, the Everyman Library has always tried to make the best books ever written available to the greatest number of people at the lowest possible price. Unique editorial features that help Everyman Paperback Classics stand out from the crowd include: a leading scholar or literary critic's introduction to the text, a biography of the author, a chronology of her or his life and times, a... (more)

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Tags: victorian writer

by H. Rider Haggard

by Wilkie Collins

by George Gissing

by H. Rider Haggard

by Anthony Trollope

by Oliphant

by Charles Dickens

by Elizabeth Taylor

by George Gissing, Stephen Gill, Stephen Charles Gill

by G. Lytton Strachey

by H. Rider Haggard

The Life and Death of a Man of Character

by Thomas Hardy

by Elizabeth Gaskell

by George Du Maurier

by Wilkie Collins

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

by Isabella Mary Beeton

by Frances Milton Trollope

by Henry Wood

by George Moore, David Skilton