William

A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone, set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death.

For 15 years Silas Marner, the lonely, friendless weaver, has lived in exile, shunned by society after being falsely accused of a robbery. The only thing Marner cares about is his pile of gold, which suddenly disappears one day. Bitter and despondent, the weaver finds an abandoned young girl named Eppie and decides to take care of her. This classic novel was one of the most popular and acclaimed novels of the 19th century. It is a timeless fable about love, friendship, redemption, and the danger of choosing greed over true happiness.

In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War", then, at age 50, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle.

Anne, like her sisters Emily and Charlotte, published under a male pseudonym -- Acton Bell -- yet still this novel was scorned by many for its exposure of the abusive male chauvinism concealed, like all things sexual, during the Victorian era.

Just as she had to use a male pseudonym in order to be free to publish, as women authors were not yet deemed acceptable or bankable, Helen Graham, the novel's protagonist and a battered wife, assumes an alias in order to gain freedom from her suffering and take up residence in Wildfell Hall, "the wildest and the loftiest eminence in our neighborhood...