Bookatlas
1830–1900

The Age of Realism

The novel's imperial century. Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy and their peers build vast social worlds, convinced that fiction can map how money, class, and desire actually move through a society.

Reading path

The Age of Realism

Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy and their peers bet that fiction can map exactly how money, class, and desire move through a life.

8 steps

Movements of this era

Italian Realism & Verismo

Manzoni, Verga, Pirandello: the Italian novel finds a nation, then dissolves the self.

French Realism

Balzac, Stendhal, and Flaubert map society with scientific ambition and perfect style.

The Russian Golden Age

In one century, Russia produces the novel's deepest moral and psychological explorations.

The Victorian Novel

Serialized, capacious, morally urgent: the English novel at full power.

American Realism & the Gilded Age

After the Civil War, American fiction turns to vernacular speech, money, and the frontier's edge.

Naturalism

Zola pushes realism to its logical extreme: heredity, environment, and the experimental novel.

Authors of this era

1783–1842StendhalFrance1785–1873Alessandro ManzoniItaly1799–1850Honoré de BalzacFrance1799–1837Alexander PushkinRussia1809–1852Nikolai GogolUkraine / Russia1810–1865Elizabeth GaskellEngland1811–1863William Makepeace ThackerayEngland1812–1891Ivan GoncharovRussia1812–1870Charles DickensEngland1814–1841Mikhail LermontovRussia1815–1882Anthony TrollopeEngland1816–1855Charlotte BrontëEngland1818–1883Ivan TurgenevRussia1818–1848Emily BrontëEngland1819–1880George EliotEngland1821–1880Gustave FlaubertFrance1821–1881Fyodor DostoevskyRussia1824–1889Wilkie CollinsEngland1828–1910Leo TolstoyRussia1831–1895Nikolai LeskovRussia1835–1910Mark TwainUSA1840–1922Giovanni VergaItaly1840–1928Thomas HardyEngland1840–1902Émile ZolaFrance1843–1916Henry JamesUSA / England1845–1900Eça de QueirósPortugal1850–1893Guy de MaupassantFrance1850–1904Kate ChopinUnited States1852–1901Leopoldo Alas "Clarín"Spain1857–1943Henrik PontoppidanDenmark1860–1904Anton ChekhovRussia1862–1937Edith WhartonUSA1865–1936Rudyard KiplingEngland1867–1936Luigi PirandelloItaly1867–1925Władysław ReymontPoland1870–1902Frank NorrisUnited States1871–1936Grazia DeleddaItaly1871–1900Stephen CraneUnited States1871–1945Theodore DreiserUnited States1873–1947Willa CatherUnited States1876–1916Jack LondonUSA1878–1968Upton SinclairUnited States1885–1951Sinclair LewisUnited States