There's a particular pleasure in settling into an R.F. Delderfield novel—the way he invites you not just to read about characters, but to live alongside them through decades of their lives. In masterworks like To Serve Them All My Days and A Horseman Riding By, Delderfield possessed that rare gift of making the ordinary extraordinary: a schoolmaster's career becomes an epic of English education, a country squire's stewardship transforms into a chronicle of rural England's vanishing way of life.
What distinguished Delderfield wasn't pyrotechnics or melodrama—it was his profound respect for the texture of everyday existence. He understood that history isn't just kings and battles; it's also the slow evolution of a market town, the way the Great War changed a generation's understanding of duty, the quiet heroism of people who simply show up and do their best year after year. His characters aren't larger than life; they're exactly life-sized, which somehow makes their struggles and triumphs all the more moving.
If you've just turned the last page of a Delderfield novel and find yourself bereft—missing not just the characters but the entire world he created, the sense of having lived through significant times alongside decent people—these fifteen authors offer similar rewards. They understand that the best sagas unfold at the pace of lived experience, that social history is inseparable from personal history, and that there's genuine drama in watching how ordinary people navigate the currents of change.
Begin with: Ross Poldark (1945)
Why he's essential: If Delderfield is the chronicler of 20th-century England, Graham serves the same function for 18th-century Cornwall. The Poldark novels (twelve in total, spanning 1783-1820) follow Ross Poldark's return from the American Revolution to find his father dead, his estate ruined, and his first love engaged to his cousin. What begins as one man's struggle to rebuild becomes an intimate portrait of Cornwall's mining communities, the clash between old aristocracy and new industry, and the slow transformation of English rural society.
The Delderfield echo: Graham shares Delderfield's interest in the relationship between individual lives and social change. Ross, like Delderfield's Paul Craddock in A Horseman Riding By, is fundamentally a steward—of his land, his people, his principles. Both authors understand that true character reveals itself not in grand gestures but in how one manages a failing mine or a struggling estate year after difficult year. Graham's Cornwall feels as authentic as Delderfield's Devon, populated by characters who speak in recognizable human voices rather than historical affectation.
Reading commitment: Substantial—twelve novels averaging 400-500 pages. Worth every page.
Begin with: The Light Years (1990)
Why she's essential: The Cazalet Chronicles (five novels) follow an upper-middle-class English family from 1937 through 1956, centering on their Sussex estate, Home Place. Howard writes with microscopic attention to domestic detail—the meals, the conversations, the unspoken tensions—while the larger sweep of history (approaching war, the Blitz, post-war austerity) reshapes everything they take for granted. The novels capture precisely how war and social change infiltrate private lives, not through dramatic set pieces but through accumulated small adjustments and losses.
The Delderfield echo: Like Delderfield, Howard understands that family sagas succeed or fail on the strength of their observation. She shares his patience with quotidian detail, his interest in how social class shapes opportunity and expectation, and his ability to track multiple characters across decades without losing narrative momentum. If you appreciated how Delderfield made you care about the day-to-day running of Bamfylde School, you'll find the same absorbing quality in Howard's attention to Home Place's household rhythms.
Reading commitment: Five substantial novels (300-600 pages each). Deeply satisfying, somewhat melancholy.
Begin with: Fame Is the Spur (1940) or My Son, My Son
Why he's essential: Spring writes with Delderfield's generous understanding of human weakness and compromise. Fame Is the Spur follows Hamer Shawcross from barefoot working-class child to aging Labour politician, charting how revolutionary idealism gradually accommodates itself to comfort and compromise. It's a portrait of an entire political era (roughly 1870s-1930s) seen through one man's evolution—or devolution. Spring never condemns Hamer, but he never lets him off the hook either.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors excel at showing how people become who they are over time, how youthful idealism meets middle-aged reality, how the person we end up being is shaped by thousands of small choices. Spring shares Delderfield's gift for making political and social history personal and immediate. His characters aren't symbols of their times; they're fully realized individuals whose struggles happen to illuminate larger historical patterns.
Reading commitment: His major novels run 400-600 pages. Spring wrote prolifically; start with Fame Is the Spur.
Begin with: Penmarric (1971)
Why she's essential: Howatch writes sprawling Gothic family sagas set primarily in Cornwall and Ireland, spanning generations and told from multiple viewpoints. Penmarric loosely parallels the Plantagenet succession disputes, transposed to a 19th-century Cornish estate. It's darker and more melodramatic than Delderfield, with more sexual intrigue and family dysfunction, but shares his interest in inheritance, land stewardship, and how family patterns repeat across generations.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors understand that land isn't just property—it's identity, continuity, responsibility. Howatch's families are more troubled than Delderfield's (her characters tend toward obsession and tragedy), but she shares his fascination with dynasty and legacy, with how estates and families rise, flourish, and decline. If you found the multi-generational sweep of God Is an Englishman satisfying, Howatch delivers similar scope with higher emotional stakes.
Reading commitment: Penmarric and Cashelmara are both 700+ page doorstoppers. Magnificently immersive.
Begin with: The Man of Property (1906)
Why he's essential: Galsworthy's Forsyte novels (nine in total, covering 1886-1926) chronicle an upper-middle-class London family whose story becomes a meditation on property, possession, and the gradual dissolution of Victorian values. Written during the period it depicts, the saga captures social change as it was happening—the emancipation of women, the challenge to rigid class structures, the trauma of the Great War. Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize for this work, and deservedly so.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors write about social transitions with sympathy for all parties. Galsworthy's Forsytes cling to Victorian certainties as the world shifts beneath them, much as Delderfield's characters in To Serve Them All My Days navigate the collapse of pre-war certainties. Both understand that social change isn't abstract—it's personal, intimate, often painful. Galsworthy's prose is more formal than Delderfield's, befitting his earlier period, but equally concerned with showing how history shapes individual destinies.
Reading commitment: The core trilogy is about 900 pages total; the complete saga runs much longer. Essential reading.
Begin with: The Fifteen Streets (1952) or The Mallen Streak
Why she's essential: Cookson is to industrial Tyneside what Delderfield is to rural Devon—its most devoted chronicler. She wrote nearly 100 novels, most set in the working-class communities of County Durham and Tyneside from the Victorian era through the mid-20th century. Her stories center on hardship, social barriers, and characters who claw their way toward better lives through sheer determination. The settings are grittier than Delderfield's, the struggles harsher, but the fundamental decency of her protagonists echoes his worldview.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors write about communities with deep knowledge and affection. Cookson's Jarrow and South Shields feel as authentic as Delderfield's provincial towns. She shares his interest in class barriers, self-improvement through education, and how local communities weather larger historical forces. Her prose is simpler and more direct than Delderfield's, her plots more melodramatic, but her commitment to depicting working-class life with dignity and complexity matches his.
Reading commitment: Most novels are 300-400 pages and can stand alone, though several form loose series. Prodigiously productive.
Begin with: The Shell Seekers (1987) or Coming Home
Why she's essential: Pilcher writes about Cornwall and Scotland the way Delderfield wrote about Devon—with intimate knowledge and deep affection. The Shell Seekers moves between 1940s wartime and 1980s present, as Penelope Keeling reflects on her bohemian childhood, her wartime marriage, and her relationship with her children. It's a quieter, more domestic saga than Delderfield's, centered on art, memory, and family dynamics rather than large historical events, but shares his gift for making you care deeply about seemingly ordinary lives.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors excel at creating that deeply satisfying sense of place where landscape and character become inseparable. Pilcher shares Delderfield's patience with the rhythms of ordinary life, his interest in how war reshapes personal destinies, and his fundamental optimism about human resilience. Her prose is warmer and more overtly romantic than Delderfield's, but equally concerned with continuity, memory, and the ways family history shapes identity.
Reading commitment: Her major novels run 500-900 pages. Deeply comforting reads.
Begin with: Circle of Friends (1990) or Echoes
Why she's essential: Binchy is Ireland's Delderfield—the chronicler of small-town life across the mid-to-late 20th century. Her novels, typically set in Irish villages or small cities from the 1950s-1980s, capture a society in transition: the gradual loosening of the Catholic Church's grip, changing expectations for women, the pull between tradition and modernity. She writes with warmth, gentle humor, and deep sympathy for her characters' struggles to reconcile what they want with what's expected of them.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors understand small-town life—its comforts and its constraints, the way everyone knows your business, the difficulty of escaping your designated role. Binchy shares Delderfield's gift for ensemble casts where even minor characters feel fully realized. Her Ireland, like his England, is a place where change comes gradually, where old ways persist even as new possibilities emerge, where personal happiness must be negotiated against community expectations.
Reading commitment: Most novels are 400-600 pages. Consistently warm and satisfying.
Begin with: Sarum (1987) or London
Why he's essential: Rutherfurd writes sagas on an almost geological timescale. Sarum covers 10,000 years of history in the Salisbury area, from Stone Age hunters to Thatcher-era Britain, following several families whose descendants interweave across centuries. It's Delderfield multiplied exponentially—instead of 30-40 years, Rutherfurd gives you millennia, yet maintains that same interest in how ordinary people's lives are shaped by their landscape and their era.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors believe that place shapes character and destiny. Rutherfurd's ambition is larger—he's showing how a single location evolves across deep time—but his technique is similar: fictional families whose experiences illuminate historical change. His individual characters have less depth than Delderfield's (there are simply too many across too many centuries), but the cumulative effect is powerful, showing continuity and change across generations in ways that echo Delderfield's multi-volume Swann saga.
Reading commitment: Each novel is 800-1000 pages. Genuinely epic in scope.
Begin with: The Thorn Birds (1977)
Why she's essential: McCullough's masterwork follows the Cleary family across three generations (1915-1969) on their Australian sheep station, Drogheda. It's a saga of forbidden love, family dynamics, and the Australian outback—harsh, beautiful, and unforgiving. The central relationship between Meggie Cleary and Father Ralph de Bricassart provides romantic intensity, but the novel's real power lies in its portrait of a family persisting through droughts, deaths, and the evolution of Australian rural society.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors write about families tied to land, about stewardship across generations, about how geography and climate shape character. McCullough's Australia is harsher than Delderfield's England, her emotional register more intense, but she shares his interest in dynasty, inheritance, and the tension between personal desire and family duty. If you appreciated the multi-generational sweep of Delderfield's Swann novels, The Thorn Birds offers similar satisfaction with Australian rather than English character.
Reading commitment: One substantial novel (600+ pages), complete in itself. Emotionally intense.
Begin with: The Pillars of the Earth (1989) for medieval England, or Fall of Giants for 20th century
Why he's essential: Follett writes historical fiction with thriller pacing but genuine interest in how societies function. The Pillars of the Earth, set during the 12th-century construction of a cathedral, follows multiple characters across 40 years as they build, fight, and scheme. His Century Trilogy traces five families (Welsh, English, German, Russian, American) through the World Wars and Cold War, showing how great events impact ordinary lives—which puts him squarely in Delderfield territory, just with more international scope.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors blend personal drama with historical sweep. Follett's plots are more action-driven (he's a thriller writer by training), but his fundamental interest in showing history through individual lives aligns with Delderfield's approach. The Century Trilogy particularly echoes Delderfield's WWI and WWII novels, following characters through decades of change and showing how political events reshape private destinies.
Reading commitment: Each novel is 900+ pages; the Century Trilogy runs three volumes. Substantial but compulsively readable.
Begin with: A Woman of Substance (1979)
Why she's essential: Bradford's breakthrough novel follows Emma Harte from impoverished Yorkshire servant girl (1905) to business empire matriarch (1960s), spanning five generations across seven novels. It's a rags-to-riches saga infused with Yorkshire grit, focusing on one woman's indomitable will and the family dynasty she builds. Bradford writes about business, commerce, and empire-building with the same attention Delderfield devoted to education or land management—as expressions of character and purpose.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors write about people who create legacies through work and determination. Emma Harte, like Delderfield's Adam Swann, is a builder—someone who transforms an idea into an institution that outlasts them. Bradford shares Delderfield's interest in how values and conflicts transmit across generations, how children both inherit and rebel against parental legacies. Her prose is more glamorous (Emma ends up wealthy, not simply comfortable), but the fundamental interest in character formation through challenge echoes Delderfield's themes.
Reading commitment: The Emma Harte saga runs seven novels. A Woman of Substance (800+ pages) can stand alone.
Begin with: Kane and Abel (1979) or Only Time Will Tell (Clifton Chronicles)
Why he's essential: Archer writes polished, plot-driven sagas with more twists and cliffhangers than Delderfield, but shares his interest in showing how circumstances shape destiny. Kane and Abel follows two men—one born to Boston banking wealth, one a Polish orphan—whose lives intersect and compete across 20th-century America. The Clifton Chronicles (seven novels, 1920s-1980s) follows a Bristol working-class boy who discovers he might be an aristocrat's son, launching a multi-generational saga of family secrets and social mobility.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors are interested in class, opportunity, and how historical events (particularly wars) function as social levelers. Archer's plotting is more contrived, his coincidences more frequent, but his fundamental belief in showing character through challenge and his commitment to multi-generational storytelling align with Delderfield's. The Clifton Chronicles in particular, with its English setting and WWII backdrop, operates in familiar Delderfield territory.
Reading commitment: Kane and Abel is a standalone (500 pages); the Clifton Chronicles runs seven novels. Highly readable page-turners.
Begin with: No Angel (1997)
Why she's essential: Vincenzi writes multi-generational sagas centered on the British publishing industry, spanning 1904-1960s. Her Lytton family saga follows a publishing house through two world wars and enormous social change, with emphasis on the women who help build and sustain the business despite limited official recognition. Vincenzi writes with glamour and romance, but also genuine interest in how publishing works, how businesses evolve, and how family dynamics complicate professional partnerships.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors understand institutions—whether publishing houses, schools, or haulage companies—as expressions of human purpose and character. Vincenzi shares Delderfield's interest in how work defines identity, how family businesses embody family values and conflicts, and how women navigate professional ambition in eras that officially denied them opportunity. Her prose is more consciously stylish than Delderfield's, but the underlying interest in showing social history through institutional and family evolution is similar.
Reading commitment: The Spoils of Time trilogy runs three 600+ page novels. Absorbing and emotionally complex.
Begin with: A Town Like Alice (1950) or Trustee from the Toolroom
Why he's essential: Shute writes about ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with decency, competence, and quiet courage—which could serve as a description of Delderfield's work as well. A Town Like Alice follows Jean Paget from Japanese POW camps in Malaya to post-war Australian outback, showing how trauma shapes character and how resilience manifests in building community. Shute's prose is understated to the point of self-effacement, but his faith in human capability and essential goodness echoes throughout his work.
The Delderfield echo: Both authors believe in the fundamental decency of ordinary people doing their best in difficult circumstances. Shute shares Delderfield's interest in competence (his protagonists are engineers, mechanics, practical people who understand how things work), in communities pulling together during crisis, and in the quiet heroism of simply persisting. Both write with enormous respect for their characters' struggles, without condescension or melodrama.
Reading commitment: Most novels are 250-350 pages, complete in themselves. Deceptively simple, deeply moving.
If you loved To Serve Them All My Days (the schoolmaster saga): Try Elizabeth Jane Howard's The Cazalet Chronicles for similar attention to how pre-war certainties collapsed, or Winston Graham's Poldark novels for another principled man trying to do right by his community.
If you loved A Horseman Riding By (the estate stewardship saga): Try Winston Graham's Poldark series or Susan Howatch's Penmarric for similar attention to land, legacy, and stewardship across generations.
If you loved God Is an Englishman and the Swann family saga: Try Barbara Taylor Bradford's Emma Harte novels or Jeffrey Archer's Clifton Chronicles for similar multi-generational business and family dynamics.
If you loved Delderfield's Devon and regional authenticity: Try Rosamunde Pilcher's Cornwall, Catherine Cookson's Tyneside, or Maeve Binchy's Ireland for similar sense-of-place writing.
If you loved the slow accumulation of life across decades: Try Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles or John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga for similar patient, detailed observation of ordinary lives.
If you want even longer multi-generational sweeps: Try Edward Rutherfurd's place novels or Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds for sagas spanning multiple generations.
If you appreciate Delderfield's interest in WWI and WWII: Try Ken Follett's Century Trilogy or Nevil Shute's war novels for similar exploration of how great wars reshape individual destinies.
There's something almost countercultural about reading Delderfield today. In an era of 300-page novels and prestige TV series that resolve in one season, his commitment to the long view—to showing how character develops across decades, how communities evolve, how the small decisions of ordinary people accumulate into meaningful lives—feels almost radical. He asks for patience, for attention, for a willingness to care about people who aren't especially glamorous or dramatic, who simply try to do decent work and treat people fairly.
The authors on this list share that commitment to substance over flash, to showing rather than telling, to trusting that readers will find drama enough in authentic human experience. They understand that the best family sagas aren't soap operas—they're intimate histories, showing how large forces (wars, economic change, shifting social values) work themselves out in individual hearts and homes.
These are novels to live with rather than simply read. They're the literary equivalent of portrait galleries, where you come to know not just the main figures but the whole cast of supporting characters, until the world of the novel feels as real and inhabited as your own. They reward slow reading, reflection, the kind of deep engagement that's increasingly rare in our attention-fractured age.
If you're willing to make that investment—to settle in for the long haul, to let characters and communities reveal themselves gradually, to trust that the accumulation of ordinary days contains its own drama—these authors will reward you handsomely. Pick up any of these novels, make a cup of tea, and prepare to spend significant time somewhere else, with people who will come to feel like old friends.
That's the Delderfield gift, and these fifteen authors carry it forward with honor.
