Gilded Age books
Gilded Age books to start from. Open one to see books like it, or tell BookSense what you loved for four picks made for you.
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New to the genre? These 5 are the books to read first.
The Rise of Silas Lapham
William Dean HowellsA self-made paint manufacturer tests his fortune and his ethics against Boston society, a central example of the period's realist novel.
The House of Mirth
Edith WhartonA New York woman's slow fall in status shows how the marriage market and social rules shape a life, written with close attention to class.
The Age of Innocence
Edith WhartonSet in 1870s New York, it portrays an upper-class world of rigid codes and unspoken feeling, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921.
Sister Carrie
Theodore DreiserA young woman's rise through Chicago and New York shows the pull of consumer desire and urban wages, and its frank treatment caused a publishing controversy.
The Gilded Age
Charles Dudley WarnerA satire of land speculation, political corruption and the cult of money, which gave the period its name.
Chosen and described with AI from our notes on the genre.
More gilded age books
- Looking Backward
Looking BackwardEdward Bellamy - The Bostonians
The BostoniansHenry James - Maggie
MaggieStephen Crane - The Octopus
The OctopusFrank Norris - Democracy
DemocracyHenry Adams - How the Other Half Lives
How the Other Half LivesJacob A. Riis - Progress and Poverty
Progress and PovertyHenry George - The Theory of the Leisure Class
The Theory of the Leisure ClassThorstein Veblen - Main-travelled Roads
Main-travelled RoadsHamlin Garland - The History of the Standard Oil Company
The History of the Standard Oil CompanyIda Minerva Tarbell - The age of capital, 1848-1875
The age of capital, 1848-1875Eric Hobsbawm1975 - The American pageant,
The American pageant,Thomas A. Bailey1956