By the time you read this

Phineas Finn, the Irish member

Anthony Trollope

Phineas Redux is a novel by Anthony Trollope. It is the fourth of the "Palliser" series of novels and the sequel to the second book of the series, Phineas Finn. After the death of his Irish wife, Phineas Finn returns to London and to the House of Commons. But though drawn back apparently irresistibly, he never approaches politics with the zest of earlier days. What Trollope describes, in some of his most powerful writing, is a sad, at times almost sombre, progress towards maturity and self-wisdom. Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. His first major success came with The Warden (1855) - the first of six novels set in the fictional county of Barsetshire. The comic masterpiece Barchester Towers (1857) has probably become the best-known of these. His satirical novel The Way We Live Now critics acknowledge as his masterpiece.

Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy

Hardy's masterpiece traces a poor stonemason's ill-fated romance with his free-spirited cousin. No Victorian institution is spared - marriage, religion, education - and the outrage following publication led the embittered author to renounce fiction. Modern critics hail this novel as a pioneering work of feminism and socialist thought.