But every one will understand me if I call it George Eliot. These are framed by chapters about the climate of ideas at the beginning of the age, and at the end: The difference that the period had developed can best be seen if we consider this: Macaulay, it is said, never talked about his religion: It meant a real Victorian talent; that of exploding unexpectedly and almost, as it seemed, unintentionally.
Gilbert made good jokes by the thousand; but he never in his best days made the joke that could possibly have been expected of him. This is the last essential of the Victorian. Laugh at him as a limited man, a moralist, conventionalist, an opportunist, a formalist. But remember also that he was really a humorist; and may still be laughing at you. No, this one does not have any of the pithy sayings for which G.
But if you are a fan of literature you'll enjoy his take on these Victorian authors. He wrote the book when these authors were still widely read so he assumes the reader knows a lot about them. Even though I'm quite a literature fan, I had only heard of half of them. After reading this book I looked up books by several of the obscure authors he recommended and I can see why they were put to rest. Still, this is a fascinating overview of Victorian novelists. I had forgotten how wonderful it get to read Chesterton's take on just about anything.
As always, he is both informative and quirky, and a lot of fun.
Just okay, rather boring. The Victorian age is of interest to me but I wish the book were more interesting to read. I have not been able to finish it yet but it definitely is a thought provoking read. Complete and interesting, it gives a deep insight of the Victorian Literature without being boring I would recommend it for a first approach to the subject. Victorian Age Literature and its Free!
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One person found this helpful. Gilbert Keith Chesterton is one of those literary giants of the last century who continues to impact the way we think. His knowledge of the materials and his inciteful reviews in addition to his remarkable facility with words makes him a pleasure to read.
I never knew I wanted to know so much about the Victorian writers and after having read this book, I am further moved to explore more.
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However Hopkins's poetry was not published until Arnold's works anticipate some of the themes of these later poets, while Hopkins drew inspiration from verse forms of Old English poetry such as Beowulf. The reclaiming of the past was a major part of Victorian literature with an interest in both classical literature but also the medieval literature of England.
The Victorians loved the heroic, chivalrous stories of knights of old and they hoped to regain some of that noble, courtly behaviour and impress it upon the people both at home and in the wider empire. The best example of this is Alfred Tennyson 's Idylls of the King , which blended the stories of King Arthur , particularly those by Thomas Malory , with contemporary concerns and ideas. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood also drew on myth and folklore for their art, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti contemporaneously regarded as the chief poet amongst them, although his sister Christina is now held by scholars to be a stronger poet.
The first play to achieve consecutive performances was the London comedy Our Boys by H. Byron , opening in Its astonishing new record of 1, performances was bested in by Charley's Aunt by Brandon Thomas. Gilbert , Oscar Wilde became the leading poet and dramatist of the late Victorian period. Wilde's comic masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest , was the greatest of the plays in which he held an ironic mirror to the aristocracy while displaying virtuosic mastery of wit and paradoxical wisdom. It has remained extremely popular. 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 but also a new group of dedicated children's authors. Writers like Lewis Carroll , R.
Ballantyne and Anna Sewell wrote mainly for children, although they had an adult following. Other authors such as Anthony Hope and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote mainly for adults, but their adventure novels are now generally classified as for children.
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Other genres include nonsense verse , poetry which required a childlike interest e. Compiling folk tales by many authors with different topics made it possible for children to read literature by and about lots of different things that interested them. There were different types of books and magazines written for boys and girls. Girls' stories tended to be domestic and to focus on family life, whereas boys' stories were more about adventures. The Victorian era was an important time for the development of science and the Victorians had a mission to describe and classify the entire natural world.
Much of this writing does not rise to the level of being regarded as literature but one book in particular, Charles Darwin 's On the Origin of Species , remains famous. The theory of evolution contained within the work challenged many of the ideas the Victorians had about themselves and their place in the world. Although it took a long time to be widely accepted, it would dramatically change subsequent thought and literature.
Much of the work of popularizing Darwin's theories was done by his younger contemporary Thomas Henry Huxley , who wrote widely on the subject. A number of other non-fiction works of the era made their mark on the literature of the period. The philosophical writings of John Stuart Mill covered logic , economics, liberty and utilitarianism. The large and influential histories of Thomas Carlyle: The writings of Thomas Babington Macaulay on English history helped codify the Whig narrative that dominated the historiography for many years. John Ruskin wrote a number of highly influential works on art and the history of art and championed such contemporary figures as J.
Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites. A number of monumental reference works were published in this era, most notably the Oxford English Dictionary which would eventually become the most important historical dictionary of the English language. The old Gothic tales that came out of the late 19th century are the first examples of the genre of fantastic fiction.
These tales often centred on larger-than-life characters such as Sherlock Holmes , famous detective of the times, Sexton Blake , Phileas Fogg , and other fictional characters of the era, such as Dracula , Edward Hyde , The Invisible Man , and many other fictional characters who often had exotic enemies to foil. Spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a particular type of story-writing known as gothic. Gothic literature combines romance and horror in attempt to thrill and terrify the reader. Possible features in a gothic novel are foreign monsters, ghosts, curses, hidden rooms and witchcraft.
Gothic tales usually take place in locations such as castles, monasteries, and cemeteries, although the gothic monsters sometimes cross over into the real world, making appearances in cities such as London.
Writers from the United States and the British colonies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada were influenced by the literature of Britain and are often classed as a part of Victorian literature, although they were gradually developing their own distinctive voices. From the sphere of literature of the United States during this time are some of the country's greats including: The problem with the classification of "Victorian literature" is the great difference between the early works of the period and the later works which had more in common with the writers of the Edwardian period and many writers straddle this divide.
Wells , Bram Stoker , H. Rider Haggard , Jerome K.