+1 to both Middlemarch and Bleak House - I generally go for the Russians over the Brits when it comes to 19th century fiction, but those two are the exception. And both Eliot and Dickens certainly influenced Tolstoy, at least according to this list of books he himself compiled: http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/leo-tolstoy-creates-a-lis...