In this study group we will read six novels that didn’t just describe their worlds, but helped change how people thought about—and acted on—major social issues. Charles Dickens’s portrait of the ills of Victorian industrialization in Hard Times (Norton, 2015) led to numerous important pieces of pro-worker legislation. Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (Penguin,1998) created sympathy for the British working class at the time of the Chartist movement. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (Penguin, 1985) was a seminal muckraking text and was directly responsible for the Pure Food and Drug Act and The Meat Inspection Act. All Quiet on the Western Front (Vintage, 2025) by Erich Maria Remarque gave shape to a generation of anti-war sentiment following World War I. Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (Vintage, 2020) was Instrumental in turning the support of Western communists from Stalin’s Communist Party and communism itself. And, it is impossible to imagine modern discussions of totalitarianism and censorship without the language and structure provided by Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Any edition of these books is acceptable.
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