Beautiful, honest Nell Trent lives with her devoted Grandfather in his Old Curiosity Shop, an enchanting shop of odds and ends. Desperate to make a better life for his Nell, Grandfather secretly gambles and gets deeply into debt with the unscrupulous Quilp. When what little money they have is lost in a game of cards, Quilp claims The Old Curiosity Shop as payment for the loans

Released in installments from 1840 to 1841, Charles Dicken's The

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is the love story between the good shepherd Gabriel Oak and the proud heiress Bathsheba Everdene. Bathsheba scorns Gabriel's first bald proposal, and many years pass, seeing their positions in society change, as well as their relationship to each other. Bathsheba must see the tragic consequences of her easy use of others before she understands who her truest friend is.

Middlemarch is George Eliot's great novel of idealism, self-delusion, marriage, hypocrisy, education and the status of women. Though set against a backdrop of widespread social and economic change, Middlemarch is still, as its subtitle states, A Study of Provincial Life, and an exploration of the idea that "the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts."