Emma and Mansfield Park by Jane Austen - Small town actions and attitudes are the focus of all of
Austen's novels, but these two demonstrate most perceptively the author's sense of the weakness of
human nature and the values of the sensibility-obsessed society of her time. See also Northanger Abbey
(the influence of art on young minds), Persuasion (the matter of class), and Pride and Prejudice (the
contemporary importance of marriage).
Shirley by Charlotte Brontë - Of all of the Brontë sisters' novels,
this is probably the most acutely socially aware. It is the tale of class conflict and the social background
to the story is as important as the plot itself. See also Jane Eyre.
The Way of all Flesh by Samuel
Butler - A critique of the Victorian values of society that the author so despised through the eyes of
four generations.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - The first social-realist work in the English
language, perhaps. The stories themselves are fascinating, but it is the characters who tell them, representative
of their stereotypical values and attitudes, who make this such a delight.
The Secret Agent by Joseph
Conrad - One of the few land-based Conrad tales, and also one of the most detailed in its portrayal of
society: bitingly satirical and extremely dark. Meanwhile, Youth and Lord Jim speak volumes about
the microcosmic society of the boat and the island community respectively.
Hard Times, A Tale of Two
Cities and Nicholas Nickleby are characteristically socially-concerned Dickens novels. Dickens is famous
for documenting the foibles of his society, so none of his books should disappoint in this area. However,
for compelling detail and mature social critique Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Dombey and Son are
the very best.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Russian perspective, with an emphasis
on greed and betrayal.
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot - One of the bleaker accounts of Victorian
rural life imaginable (even with Eliot's previous novel Adam Bede in mind). This is a tale of two contrasting
societies, both similarly merciless towards a wayward but well-meaning young girl.
The History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - An old and dead society, perhaps, but a
fascinating one nonetheless, and in Gibbons' acclaimed book.
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas
Hardy is, like so many of his novels, concerned with the passing of one way of life and its replacement
with the new and 'improved'. Here, society itself adapts to technological improvements and the old ways
die with Henchard, the tragic hero of the tale.
Dubliners by James Joyce - This is the most socially realistic
work of Joyce: a collection of stories set in Dublin looking with a keen bespectacled eye at the moments
that define society and its urban paralysis as the author sees it.
Kim by Rudyard Kipling - One of the
reasons this book is still so respected is that it offers an extremely detailed portrait of India in colonial
times.
Sons and Lovers, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence - The politics
of love, work and the family, not to mention being the first truly northern working-class English novels.
Martin
Eden by Jack London - A writer becomes increasingly alienated by society and assumptions made
about his beliefs and politics. This book focuses on the pain of finding oneself on the outside of a paranoid
and judgemental society.
Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay - A
wonderful compilation of some of the most extreme and unusual happenings and habits in mankind's
history.
Pepys' Diary by Samuel Pepys - The society of the London poor, the fortunate worker, and the
less than fortunate criminal in the Tower are all to be found in Pepys' famous diary.
Tristram Shandy by
Laurence Sterne - The first post-modern book if truth be told and well ahead of its time (by two centuries
or so) in its deconstruction of the then nascent concept of the book. Sterne has time in these pages to
satirise every absurd element of his society and himself in a compelling and downright hilarious manner.
Uncle
Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - The politics of race are central to this abolitionist volume that
stirred up anti-racist feeling through its sympathetic vision of black men but was so exaggerated that
it actually provoked some racist attitudes.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - The different fates of two
families at the time of the Napoleonic Wars with inevitable detail of Russian society.
Vanity Fair by William
Makepeace Thackeray - A visceral portrait of the upper classes in the nineteenth century.