VictoriansLucy Pearce

Overview• Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of

Queen Victoria (1837–1901). • It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic

period and the very different Literature of the 20th century. Along with romance novels, there were many horror novels written as well.

• The 19th century is often regarded as a high point in British literature as well as in other countries such as France, the United States and Russia. Books, and novels in particular, became ubiquitous, and the "Victorian novelist" created legacy works with continuing appeal.

Novelists• Charles Dickens- Dickens is still one of the most popular and read authors of

that time. His first real novel, The Pickwick Papers, written at only twenty-five, was an overnight success, and all his subsequent works sold extremely well.

• William Thackarey was Dickens's great rival at the time. With a similar style but a slightly more detached, acerbic and barbed satirical view of his characters, he also tended to depict situations of a more Middle class flavour than Dickens. He is best known for his novel Vanity Fair, subtitled A Novel without a Hero. Anthonu Trollope tended to write about a slightly different part of the structure, namely the landowning and professional classes.

• The Bronte sisters - Anne, Charlotte and Emily Bronte had time in their short lives to produce masterpieces of fiction although these were not immediately appreciated by Victorian critics. Wuthering Heights, Emily's only work, in particular has violence, passion, the supernatural, heightened emotion and emotional distance, an unusual mix for any novel but particularly at this time.

The Style of the Victorian Novel

• Victorian novels tend to be idealized portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, love and luck win out in the end. While this formula was the basis for much of earlier Victorian fiction, the situation became more complex as the century progressed.

Children’s Literature

• The Victorians are credited with 'inventing childhood', partly via their efforts to stop child labour and the introduction of compulsory education.

• As children began to be able to read, literature for young people became a growth industry, with not only established writers producing works for children (such as Dickens' A Child’s History of England).