George Moore 
A Mummer’s Wife (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) 

This 1884 novel examines the life of a woman seduced away from her invalid husband by a member of an operetta troupe. Moore’s unwavering account of the protagonist’s descent into alcoholism—causing her to do unthinkable things—was too brutal, however, for readers of the time. One critic wrote, “A more repulsive story was probably never written.” It stands today as one of the first major English-language novels in the realist tradition.

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