Times (1854) is set in a small Midlands industrial town and particularly criticizes the effect of Utilitarianism on the lives of cities' working classes. John Ruskin declared Hard Times his favourite Dickens work due to its exploration of important social questions. Walter Allen characterised Hard Times as an unsurpassed "critique of industrial society", Notable examples This is a list of a few of the early or notable examples; others belong on the main list Panchatantra (ca. 200 BCE) by Vishnu Sarma Don Quixote (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes Simplicius Simplicissimus (1668) by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) by John Bunyan Persian Letters (1721) by Montesquieu The History and Adventures of an Atom (1769) by Tobias Smollett Fables and Parables (1779) by Ignacy Krasicki The Partisan Leader (1836) by Nathaniel Beverley Tucker Barnaby Rudge (1841) by Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens The Palliser novels (1864–1879) by Anthony Trollope War and Peace (1869) by Leo Tolstoy Demons, also known as The Possessed or The Devils (1872), by Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Gilded Age (1876) by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner Democracy: An American Novel (1880) by Henry Adams The Princess Casamassima (1886) by Henry James The Bostonians (1886) by Henry James Resurrection (1899) by Leo Tolstoy NEQUA or The Problem of the Ages (1900) Jack Adams The Old New Land (1902) by Theodor Herzl Mother (1906) by Maxim Gorky The Jungle (1906) by Upton Sinclair The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914) by Robert Tressell The Trial (1925) by Franz Kafka The Castle (1926) by Franz Kafka The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma (1932) by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz Walden Two (1948) by B. F. Skinner Dark Green, Bright Red (1950) by Gore Vidal Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand The Manchurian Candidate (1959) by Richard Condon The Comedians (1966) by Graham Greene Cancer Ward (1967) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Washington, D.C. (1967) by Gore Vidal Burr (1973) by Gore Vidal The Chocolate War (1974) by Robert Cormier Guerrillas (1975) by V. S. Naipaul Ragtime (1975) by E.L. Doctorow 1876 (1976) by Gore Vidal Vineland (1990) by Thomas Pynchon From the Fatherland with Love (2005) by Ryu Murakami Occupied (2015); The Little Voice (2016); Money Power Love (2017) by Joss Sheldon Science fiction Starship Troopers (1959) by Robert A. Heinlein Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin The