Victorian period in classic literature
Introduction
"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own
peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their own peril."--by Oscar Wilde, Preface, "The
Picture of Dorian Gray"
Victorian literature was produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). It is often
considered a bridge between the romantic-era works of the previous century and what would
become the literature of the newly industrialized world of the twentieth century. Victorian
literature is characterized by a strong sense of morality, and is also known for its attempts to
combine imagination and emotion of the accessibility of art for the common person. Some
of the best-known authors of this period are Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre), Emily Brontë
(Wuthering Heights), and Charles Dickens (Great Expectations).
Essential Facts
One of the enduring authors of the Victorian era is George Eliot (a pseudonym for Mary Ann
Evans). Virginia Woolf called Eliot’s novel Middlemarch “one of the few English novels written
for grown-up people.”
Charles Dickens was a self-made man. He published his first novel, The Pickwick Papers,
in 1836. It made him an overnight success, and he was popular all his life. Dickens is still the
most widely read novelist of the Victorian era.
All three Brontë sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—were writers. For a number of years,
however, they all published under the male pen names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
Literature for children, often with a strong moralistic tone, became wildly popular during the
Victorian era. Authors like Lewis Carrol (Alice in Wonderland) and Rudyard Kipling (The
Jungle Book) were especially favoured.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton is widely regarded as the worst writer of the Victorians (although he was
immensely popular in his day). Bulwer-Lytton is responsible for this infamous sentence: “it was
a dark and stormy night.”
The novel
The Victorian era was the great age of the English novel—realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with
characters, and long. It was the ideal form to describe contemporary life and to entertain the
middle class. The novels of Charles Dickens, full to overflowing with drama, humor, and
an endless variety of vivid characters and plot complications, tell us what urban life was like for
all classes. William Makepeace Thackeray is best known for Vanity Fair (1848), which
wickedly satirizes hypocrisy and greed.
Emily Brontë's single novel, Wuthering Hights (1847), is a unique masterpiece propelled by
a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense. The fine
novels of Emily's sister Charlotte Brontë, especially Jane Eyre (1847) and Villette (1853), are
more rooted in convention, but daring in their own ways.
Thomas Hardy's profoundly pessimistic novels are all set in the harsh, punishing midland
county he called Wessex. Samuel Butler produced novels satirizing the Victorian ethos, and
Robert Louis Stevenson, a master of his craft, wrote arresting adventure fiction and children's
verse. The mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the name Lewis Carroll,
produced the complex and sophisticated children's classics Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
(1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871). Lesser novelists of considerable merit include
Benjamin Disraeli, George Gissing, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Wilkie Collins. By the end of the
period, the novel was considered not only the premier form of entertainment but also a primary
means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems.
Poetry
The preeminent poet of the Victorian age was Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Although romantic
in subject matter, his poetry was tempered by personal melancholy; in its mixture of social
certitude and religious doubt it reflected the age. The poetry of Robert Browning and his wife,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was immensely popular, though Elizabeth's was more venerated
during their lifetimes. Browning is best remembered for his superb dramatic monologues.
Rudyard Kipling, the poet of the empire triumphant, captured the quality of the life of the
soldiers of British expansion.
Writers associated with the late Victorian Period include: Oscar Wilde (1856-1900), Thomas
Hardy (1840-1928), Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) and Louis Stevenson (1850-1894).
Victorian period was a time of change, a time of great upheaval, but also a time of GREAT
literature!
Authors:
Charles Dickens
Charlotte Bronte
Emily Bronte
George Eliot
Lewis Carroll
Oscar Wilde
Rudyard Kipling