Sybil

Disraeli’s subtitle names his theme: the two nations of rich and poor who, he wrote, lived as if on separate planets. The story sends Charles Egremont, a young aristocrat, among the mill towns and Chartist meetings of industrial England, where he falls in love with Sybil Gerard, the devout daughter of a working-class agitator. Their romance carries a pointed argument about class, poverty, and the duties the wealthy owe the laboring people. Drawing on a real government report into child labor, Disraeli wrote fiction meant to shape opinion, and his phrase ‘two nations’ passed into the language. Published in 1845, it stands among the sharpest of the Victorian social-problem novels. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.