Howells and the Age of Realism (1954), by Everett Carter, provides discussion of author and literary critic William Dean Howells and his significance to the development of Realism in American literature.

Kate Chopin is one of the most important realist writers of nineteenth-century fiction. Her most famous work is The Awakening (1899), a story about a woman’s self-discovery and growing sexuality in the American South.

Introduction to Russian Realism (1965), by Ernest J. Simmons, is a collection of essays on Realism in Russian literature and includes essays on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov.

The Alienation of Reason: A History of Positivist Thought (1968), by Leszek Kolakowski, provides a history of positivism in nineteenthcentury thought. Positivism was an important influence on the development of the realist movement in literature.

Mark Twain, the pen name for Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was a pioneer in the use of realistic speech patterns, notably through the use of dialectical speech. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer’s Comrade (1884) are good illustrations of his use of dialect.

Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art (1984), by Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner, offers discussion of Romanticism and Realism in nineteenth-century art.

“Middlemarch”: A Novel of Reform (1988), by Bert G. Hornback, is a discussion of the political and social views represented in Eliot’s realist masterpiece Middlemarch.

“War and Peace”: Tolstoy’s Mirror of the World (1995), by Rimvydas Silbajoris, provides critical discussion of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.