100 books like The Wood Beyond the World

This book has become so familiar to us through cartoons and movies that we often forget how very weird it is as a piece of writing. The book begins when Alice, bored of her sister’s company, notices a white rabbit muttering to itself “Oh dear! Oh dear!”, and starts to become curious—not, mind you, because talking rabbits are impossible, but only because they are so very intriguing.

The rest of the book shares this bemused tone: Alice will be subjected to all sorts of indignities, including a near-beheading, but as a “good” Victorian girl, she will generally accept the bizarre reality that is presented to her. Carroll’s mastery of language is key to this effect. Nearly every character sounds sensible, turning well-formed logical sentences, but they never make much actual sense, and their speeches are riddled with so many puns, double meanings, and other linguistic tricks that one can never… show more.

The first time I read this book, I was baffled. In the second chapter, we get introduced to the main character by being told that “he has a leg”—the “leg of the born cavalier,” a “burning leg,” the “leg that smiles, that winks, is obsequious to you, yet perforce of beauty self-satisfied.”

Clearly, this is no ordinary leg, but Meredith is no ordinary novelist. Skeptics claim that Meredith’s style is arch, theatrical, self-indulgent, and pompous—not unlike the central character of this book, a clueless narcissist named Willoughby who seeks to dominate everyone around him.

But I have since come to appreciate how Meredith draws on the full resources of the language to undercut anything (or anyone) that he deems insincere and artificial, blending the intensity of poetry with the exuberance of prose to create a style both versatile and original.  

Walter Pater’s only novel is not just weird for its style but also for its plot, which traces the development of a young man as he experiments with the various philosophies and religious sects of second-century Rome. But content and style go hand in hand, for, as Pater writes, “That preoccupation of the dilettante with what might seem mere details of form, after all, did but serve the purpose of bringing to the surface, sincerely and in their integrity, certain strong personal intuitions, a certain vision of apprehension of things as really being, with important results, thus, rather than thus.”

Language, in other words, is how we feel our way through the world, and the novel brilliantly captures the experience of being a young person for whom syntax and vocabulary constitute a way of life. When it was first published, many were repulsed by Pater’s convoluted syntax and rarefied tone,… show more.

Today, Thackeray is best remembered for Vanity Fair, but many of his fellow writers—including Anthony Trollope and later Virginia Woolf—thought Henry Esmond was his best book. The story itself can be hard to appreciate, delving into the intricacies of eighteenth-century politics. George Eliot called it “the most uncomfortable book you can imagine” because the hero ends up marrying his mother (figure).

The real charm of the book lies in its style, which is a painstaking pastiche of English in the age of Queen Anne. Thackeray insisted that the first edition be published using an eighteenth-century font to ensure the illusion was complete. Peppered with appearances by real historical figures (such as the poet Jonathan Swift), Henry Esmond set a new standard for the historical novel in English and paved the way for the parodies of later periods. 

Published in 1848, The Half Sisters is the story of two sisters, Alice and Bianca, who grow up without knowing of the other’s existence.

Alice is middle-class, legitimate, and respectable, and goes on to have the life Victorian women were meant to have – namely, marriage. She is also bored and unhappy. Meanwhile, her sister Bianca, who is working-class, illegitimate, and definitively not respectable, chooses a different path.

Keen to make a career for herself, she becomes an actress, and throughout the novel passionately defends women’s right to work. The novel is engaging and accessible, though often forgotten now, and I love how it fantastically examines the different options open – and, indeed, closed – to women in the Victorian period.

Jill is a little-known but fascinating novel from 1884 about a young woman who, bored of her upper-class life, runs away from home to become a maid.

Jill is everything Victorian women weren’t meant to be: ambitious, scheming, brave, happy to lie, and much more interested in money than marriage. She’s also a bit in love with the woman she works for, which Victorian women certainly weren’t meant to be either.

There is so much I love about Jill, but one of my favourite things about it is how it turns Victorian tropes and expectations on their head, taking the set-up of a typically male adventure narrative and giving it to the character of Jill. It’s a wonderfully proto-feminist Victorian classic and well worth a read.

Hester, which came out in 1883, follows two central figures: Miss Catherine, an older woman who runs a bank – in itself quite a surprise to find in a Victorian novel – and Hester, her young relation, who is bored with her dull, ladylike life and wants something more.

What she really wants is to work, as Catherine does, but Catherine is determined that the bank will pass to a man. The novel focuses on their strained relationship – strained partly because they are so very alike. There’s so much I love about Hester, but I especially enjoy how it undermines and undercuts Victorian tropes about the novel and what is and isn’t a happy ending for a female character. It’s an absolutely fascinating read.

A short book even by our standards, The Warden was Trollope’s first novel. He went on to write forty-seven more, as many short stories and nonfiction books as well, all while working as an important official with the Royal Mail. I love Trollope’s books because he was a master at creating life-like characters who may be filled with flaws, but are always portrayed with loving humour. While The Warden is about a controversy over how the Church of England manages a poor house, the story is carried by the complex people and relationships at the centre of the squabble. This is the first book in the Chronicle of Barsetshire series which spins out the lives of these characters across decades.

Actually, two novellas, it’s the first, "Morpho Eugenia," that’s always stayed in my mind. I loved how it handles discussions on such subjects as teleology, determinism/personal freedom, the nature of life after death, and so on, the post-On the Origin of the Species mindset.

I particularly like the ending, which, if you’re reasonably alert, you’ll work out well before our protagonist. I don’t think this is a weakness; observing the main character, Adamson (note the surname), flailing towards an inevitable ‘reveal’ is part of the book’s point, I think.

The prose imitates Victorian literature, very post-Modern, but don’t let that put you off. I found its style immersive, making me feel closer to the time.

Gissing is forgotten now because he was a realist working in romantic times. Fiction writers were the rock stars of Victorian England. New Grub Street explores the other side of the coin: the vast number of struggling writers who hankered after the fame and fortune that was never to be theirs. At the heart of the story are two friends, the pragmatic materialist Jasper Milvain and the talented but idealistic Edward Reardon. The modest success of one novel prompts Readon to marry, saddling him with an overwhelming financial burden that crushes his talent. Milvain values money over everything else in life at a time when everything else in life depends on money. I found Gissing’s hard-boiled novel touching because, without flinching, he shows the inner conflicts of people trapped by circumstance.