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."

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final, uncompleted novel by Charles Dickens. John Jasper is a choirmaster who is in love with one of his pupils, Rosa Bud. She is the fiancee of his nephew, Edwin Drood. A hot-tempered man from Ceylon also becomes interested in her and he and Drood take an instant dislike to one another. Later, Drood disappears, and as Dickens never finished the novel, Drood's fate remains a mystery indeed.