Around 1880, world literature was undergoing a massive transformation driven by the rise of Realism and Naturalism, which challenged the emotional idealism of the Romantic era. Writers globally began shifting their focus toward gritty reality, social commentary, psychological depth, and the impacts of industrialization. Authors stopped looking at the world through a nostalgic lens. Instead, they documented the harsh realities of poverty, labor, class divides, and urban life. Influenced by Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and hereditary science, the Naturalist movement emerged. Writers treated characters like scientific subjects, looking at how environment and genetics dictated human behavior. 

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War and Peace, 1869, Leo Tolstoy

The Brothers Karamazov, 1880, Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Genealogy of Morality, 1887, Friedrich Nietzsche