Martin Eden

David tells his own life from a cruel stepfather and a bottling factory to the desk where he becomes a writer. Dickens called it his favourite of his own books.

Charles Dickens

Maggie Tulliver is clever in a town that has no use for a clever girl, and the pull between her mind and her family runs the whole novel.

George Eliot

Philip Carey moves from an unhappy childhood through art school and medicine while an obsessive love keeps derailing him. A long, honest account of learning to live.

Somerset Maugham

Four generations of a family bear down on one son who slowly works out that he does not have to become his father. A landmark attack on Victorian upbringing.

Samuel Butler

Stephen Dedalus moves from schoolboy to art student, and the prose grows up with him sentence by sentence. The starting point for readers new to Joyce.

James Joyce