VICTORIAN AGE

The Victorian Age

The later part of the nineteenth century is said to be the "Victorian Age" of English literature, because Victoria became queen of England in 1837, and there was rapid growth of democracy and splendid progress in all branches of art and science. The age produced two great poets, Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) and Robert Browning (1812-1889). Tennyson is famous for his works, like "Poems", "The Princes", "a Medley", "Maud", "In Memoriam", "The Idylls of the King", "Ballads", "Demeter" etc. Robert Browning's works, like "Paulin", "Paracelsus", "Stafford", "Sordello", "Bells and Pomegranates", "Letters", "The Ring and The Book", "Dramatic Lyrics", "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics", "Men and Women", "Dramatic Personae", "The Inn Album", "Jocoseria Colombe's Birthday", "In a Balcony", "Fifine at the Fair", "Red Cotton Night-Cap Country", and of all "The Last Ride Together", established him as a great poet of the age. 

Besides the said two poets, there were few other prominent writers of the age. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was the leading writer of all of them. Her "Piers Plowman", "The Seraphim and Other Poems", "Sonnets from the Portuguese", "Casa Guide Windows", "Aurora Leigh", "Poem Before Congress", "Last Poems" are remarkable. Robert Browning married this invalid talented lady whose fame spread much before her husband in the literary field. 

Other writers were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Moris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Among the novelists of the Victorian age, the most prominent was Charles Dickens (1812-1870) whose major works included "Pickwick Papers", "Oliver Twist", "Nicholas Nickleby", "Bleak Dorrit", "Davis Copperfield", "The Chimes", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Charismas Carol", "Dombey and Son", "Our Mutual Friend", "Old Curiosity Shop" etc. 

Another successful novelist of the age was William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) whose important works are "Henry Esmond", "Pendennis", "The Newcomes", "The Virginians", and of all of them the most popular "Vanity Fair" that brought him instant fame. His essays, like "English Humorists" and "The Four Georges", are among finest essays of the period. 

In the Victorian Age, the prominent writers, like Mary Ann Evans, George Eliot produced a few worthy novels, like "Scenes of Clerical Life", "Adam Bede", "Mill on the Floss", "Silas Marner", "Romola", "Felix Halt", "Middlemarch", "Daniel Deronda" etc., the drama-poem, "Spanish Gypsy", and a volume of essays, "the Impressions of Theophrastus Such" etc. 

Among other writers of the Victorian Age, there were Charles Reade, Anthony Trollope, Charlotte Bonti, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Charles Kingsley, Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson, Richard Doddridge Blackman, George Meredith, Thomas Babington Macaulay, an essayist, Thomas Carlyh, John Ruskin, Mathew Arnold, John Henry Newman etc. 

Thomas Hardy's "Under the Greenwood Tree", "A Pair of Blue Eyes", "Far from the Madding Crowd", "The Return of Nature", "The Woodlanders", "Tess of the D'Urbervillas", "Jude the Obscure" are his best works. 

Stevenson's wonderful novels, such as "Treasure Island", "Dr. Jekyll and Hyde", "Kidnapped", "The Master of Ballantrae", "David Balfour", and his remarkable essays, namely "Virginibus Puerisque", "Familiar Studies of Men and Books", and "Memoirs and portraits", and his sketches of travels, like "An Island Voyage", "Travels with a Donkey", "Across the Plains", "The Amateur Emigrant", and also volumes of poems, "Underwoods", "A Child's Garden of Verses" make him a great author. 

Macaulay is famous in literature for his essays, such as History of England, Essays on  Milton, etc. His poetical work "Lays of an Ancient Rome" is a collection of ballads. Ruskin's major essays are "Ethics of the Dust", "Crown of Wild Olive", "Sesame and Lilies", "Fors Clavigera", "Unto the Last", and of his books of art, "Seven Lamps of Architecture", "Stones of Venice", "Modern Painters" established him as prominent writer of the age. 

Mathew Arnold's popular works are "The Strayed Reveller and other poems", "Balder Dead", "Sohrab and Rustam", "Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems"; His essays: "The Study of Poetry", "On Translating Homer", "Essays in Criticism", "Friendship's Garland", "Culture and Anarchy" and books on religious subjects, like "St. Paul and Protestantism", "Liberation and Dogma", "God and the Bible", "Last Essays on Church and Religion", "Discourses in America" etc. are equally adored.