Overview
Victoria’s long reign saw a growth in literature, especially in fiction, practised
notably by Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontës, George Eliot, Trollope, James and
Hardy. Poetry too was popular, especially that of Tennyson; Browning and
(though then unknown) Hopkins are also major poets. Thinkers, too, were
eagerly read. Matthew Arnold, poet, critic and social critic, was the last to earn
the respectful hearing given earlier to such sages as Carlyle, Mill, Ruskin and
Newman. Many Victorians allowed their understanding to be led by thinkers,
poets, even novelists. It was an age both exhilarated and bewildered by growing
wealth and power, the pace of industrial and social change, and by scientific
discovery. After the middle of the reign, confidence began to fade; its last two
decades took on a different atmosphere, and literature developed various
specialist forms – aestheticism, professional entertainment, disenchanted
social concern. These decades, which also saw an overdue revival of drama,
are treated separately.
nThe Victorian age
‘Victorian’ is a term that is often extended beyond the queen’s reign (1837–1901) to
include William IV’s reign from 1830. Historians distinguish early, middle and late
Victorian England, corresponding to periods of growing pains, of confidence in the
1850s, and of loss of consensus after 1880, a date which offers a convenient division:
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) belonged to different
ages.
Under Victoria, a Britain transformed by the Industrial Revolution became the
world’s leading imperial power and its most interesting country. Fyodor Dostoievsky,
Mark Twain,Henry James and even French writers came to see London. New Yorkers
waited on the dockside to hear if Dickens’s Little Nell, ofThe Old Curiosity Shop, was
still alive. But were England’s authors as taken up with their rapidly changing age as
the term ‘Victorian literature’ can suggest? Many were. The historian T. B. Macaulay
praised the age’s spirit of progress. Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin prophesied
Contents
The Victorian age 259
Moral history 260
Abundance 263
Why sages? 264
Thomas Carlyle 265
John Stuart Mill 266
John Ruskin 267
John Henry Newman 269
Charles Darwin 271
Matthew Arnold 272
Further reading 272259The Age and its Sages
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