The Victorians1837-1901

Historical Background

The Days of the Young QueenShe was eighteen when she came to the throne.She ruled from 1837 to 1901.England faced with high taxes and the need forimproving conditions for workers.The right to vote was extended to all male taxpayers.The slogan The greatest happiness for the greates Number.

Middle class families became purchasers of art objects and books.

Working hours were shortened and conditions were improved.

Florence Nightingale laid the foundation for the stablished Red Cross

Dickens prode his geneartion to social reform.

There was a remarkable dvance in science and and invention (magnetism, electricity, and preventive medicine)

Scientific discoveries were against some people religious beliefs

A re-examination of education in general:free elementary schooling was open to every child.There was free intercourse with the world at large (China, Japan, Autralia, India, Canada, Egypt, South Africa)The Crystal Palace was witness of a Great World Exhibition

Victorian Literature

Victorians believed that the world and its inhabitants were constantly changing.

Writers tended to make the characters they created gradually improve as the result of courage and self-sacrifice, or grow worse because of selfishness and sin

Though much of Victorian literature is optimistic, the latter literature frequently expresses pessimism.

A stress in the importance of law, order, and self-control.

The Novel

Charles Dickens

Defended the poor and the lowly against injusticies which he attributed to the rich and the proud.

His main works:The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield.

Bronte sisters

Currel, Ellis, and Acton Bell pseudonyms used by Jane, Charlotte, and Emly Bronte.

They wrote Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey, respectively.

These three novels are romantic and realistic.

George Elliot

Mary Ann Evans was her real name.She portrayed the life of small central England communities.Her purpose was to emphasize the importance of duty and of the great part that individual character plays in human life.Her works:Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner.

George Meredith

He was a poet and a novelist.

He went behind the outward actions of his characters to get at their hidden motives.

In The Egoist, published in 1879, he applies some of his theories of comedy in one of his most enduring novels.

Thomas Hardy

Distinguished as a poet and writer of short stories, he is probably best known as a writer.

His work reflects the pessimism and doubt that found expression in much late Victorian lterature.

Robert Louis Stevenson

He used threadbare themes of romantic storytelling, such as pirates and buried treasures.

Charles Dickens

Dickens's writing style is florid and poetic, with a strong comic touch. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery—he calls one character the "Noble Refrigerator"—are often popular

Novels by Dickens

The Adventures of Oliver Twist

A Christmas Carol

David Copperfield

A Tale of Two Cities

Jane Austen

She was an English novelist whose realism, biting social commentary and masterful use of free indirect speech, burlesque, and irony have earned her a place as one of the most widely read and most beloved writers in English Literature.

Novels

Sense and Sensibility (1811)

Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Mansfield Park (1814)

Emma (1815)

Northanger Abbey (1817) (posthumous)

Persuasion (1817) (posthumous)