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Victorian Lives

Provincial webs of duty, desire, and self-invention.

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  1. Step 1 · Pride & Prejudice

    Pride and Prejudice

    Jane Austen

    Marriage, class, and the pressure to conform

  2. Step 2 · Middlemarch

    Middlemarch

    George Eliot

    A whole town's ambitions and compromises

  3. Step 3 · Vanity Fair

    Vanity Fair

    William Makepeace Thackeray

    Becky Sharp climbs a cynical social ladder

  4. Step 4 · Villette

    Villette

    Charlotte Brontë

    Solitude, restraint, and buried feeling

  5. Step 5 · Romola

    Romola

    George Eliot

    Renaissance Florence and a woman’s moral education

  6. Step 6 · Dr. Wortle

    Dr. Wortle’s School

    Anthony Trollope

    A village schoolmaster’s quiet scandal

  7. Step 7 · Hypatia

    Hypatia

    Charles Kingsley

    Faith and philosophy in dying Alexandria