Classics · Similar reads
Books like The Return of the Native
The best books like The Return of the Native are Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, and Great Expectations. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy is about ambition and entrapment, fate and environment, passion and destruction. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles
01
Thomas Hardy · Classics
Tess Durbeyfield, the eldest daughter of a poor Dorset family, is sent by her family to seek kinship with the wealthy d'Urbervilles — a family whose ancestral name her father has been told they share.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - Far from the Madding Crowd
02
Thomas Hardy · Classics
Far from the Madding Crowd is Thomas Hardy's breakthrough novel and remains his most accessible — the one with the strongest balance of romantic plot and pastoral beauty, where the landscape of Dorset feels like abundance rather than trap.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - Great Expectations
03
Charles Dickens · Classics
Great Expectations follows Pip, an orphan boy on the Kent marshes who is yanked from modest obscurity into the orbit of wealth and social aspiration when an anonymous benefactor funds his move to London.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - All Quiet on the Western Front
04
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque · History
All Quiet on the Western Front follows Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier who enlists with his classmates during the First World War after being swept up in patriotic speeches.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - The Bell Jar
05
Sylvia Plath · Memoir
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel, published in January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, one month before Plath's death.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - Bleak House
06
Charles Dickens · Classics
Bleak House is organized around the interminable Chancery case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce — a legal dispute over a will that has been grinding through the Court of Chancery for decades, consuming the fortunes and lives of everyone attached to it.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - Candide
07
Voltaire · Classics
Candide is a young man raised in a Westphalian castle on the philosophy of his tutor Pangloss: that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - David Copperfield
08
Charles Dickens · Classics
David Copperfield is the novel Dickens called his "favourite child" — a first-person bildungsroman that tracks David from a motherless childhood in Suffolk through blacking-factory misery (barely disguised autobiography), education, early work in London, two marriages, and eventual literary success.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - Doctor Zhivago
09
Boris Pasternak · Classics
Doctor Zhivago is the novel Boris Pasternak spent much of his adult life writing and which the Soviet state refused to publish, leading to its smuggled publication in Italian in 1957.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - Emma
10
Jane Austen · Classics
Emma Woodhouse is handsome, clever, and rich, and she has been comfortable and a little bit wrong about things her entire life.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - Germinal
11
Émile Zola · Classics
Germinal is the thirteenth novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, and the one most readers consider his masterpiece.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary → - Gulliver's Travels
12
Jonathan Swift · Classics
Gulliver's Travels presents itself as the plain memoir of Lemuel Gulliver, an English ship's surgeon who undertakes four extraordinary voyages.
A kindred classics read.
Read the summary →
Books like The Return of the Native: quick answers
What are the best books like The Return of the Native?
The best books like The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy are Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The Return of the Native, such as ambition and entrapment, fate and environment, passion and destruction.
What should I read after The Return of the Native?
A natural next read after The Return of the Native is Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. A kindred classics read. Other strong choices are Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.
What books are similar to The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy?
The Return of the Native centers on ambition and entrapment, fate and environment, passion and destruction. Books with a similar feel include Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Bleak House by Charles Dickens — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
