It's always worst when you don't expect it. I mean you know what you're in for when you read Dickens but I'm reading DH Lawrence Lady Chatterley's Lover and he's great - no racism, interesting class awareness until
p72 "A cold spirit of vanity, that had no warm human contacts, and that was as corrupt as any low-born Jew in craving for the prostitution with the bitch-goddess, Success."
I'm usually nervous reading things that were written pre-World War 2 - they're often filled with racism and prejudice of one kind or another even the classics of English literature, and the classics that aren't, I love and some I love despite the racism, but this was going so well and I've read since and it's still brilliant. I'm half way through and it's the only reference that is racist or prejudiced at all. Those can be the worst to come across...