Famous Poets of the Victorian era
The notable Victorian poets include Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Browning, and P.
B. Shelley, William Wordsworth, etc. Byron’s brooding romantic poems attracted a lot of
attention in a society noted for its high regard for morality.
Tennyson was a prolific writer whose love for nature and romance found expression in
beautiful poems many of which were based on myths and legends of a long past
classical era. Shelly and Wordsworth are other Victorian poets whose works paint a
brilliant picture of nature.
The novels of the Victorian era are generally based on very strong concepts of morality.
In a society where modern industries were emerging rapidly, many literary works sought
to bring out the grim reality of a landless working class and the precarious condition of a
declining gentry. Charles Dickens proved to be highly adept at portraying the actual
condition of society. He used humor and satire for this purpose.
Bronte sisters-produced some of the literary masterpieces of this period. Wuthering
Heights by Emily Bronte, set amidst the forbidding moors of Yorkshire, is a tale of
unresolved passions which draws a lively picture of contemporary society. Charlotte
Bronte wrote Jane Eyre which narrates the growth of a young woman. The tales are
firmly grounded in a sense of high morality.
Other famous writers of the Victorian era include George Elliot or Mary Ann
Evans adopted a male pseudonym to distance herself from the lighthearted
romances with which women writers of the time were associated. Her novels like
Middlemarch and Silas Merner are based on realism and provide deep psychological
insights. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair provides a satiric commentary on the age.
Morality is the dominant theme of the Victorian era. It even found its way into children’s
tales in the works of Lewis Karol and Rudyard Kipling. Other famous writers of the
Victorian era includes Anthony Trollope and Thomas Hardy who presented a Somber
picture of daily life and struggle against hardship often with help of tragic characters.
Oscar Wilde combined satire and morality to produce some of the best-known works of
English Literature.
Famous non-fiction writers ...
The Victorian era witnessed the creation of several scholarly works. The Communist
Manifesto where Karl Marx and Frederick Engels analyze the emergence of several
state systems and forecast the rise of communism was written at this time. Charles
Darwin‘s On the origin of species, written in this time was to radically alter the scientific
thinking of the world.
*Charles Dickens* is the most famous Victorian novelist. Extraordinarily popular in his
day with his characters taking on a life of their own beyond the page; Dickens is still one
of the most popular and reads authors of the world. *His first novel, The Pickwick
Papers (1836–37) written when he was twenty-five, was an overnight success, and all his
subsequent works sold extremely well.* The comedy of his first novel has a satirical
edge and this pervades his writing. Dickens worked diligently and prolifically to produce
the entertaining writing that the public wanted, but also to offer commentary on social
problems and the plight of the poor and oppressed. *His most important works
include Oliver Twist (1837–39), Nicholas Nickleby(1838–39), A Christmas
Carol (1843), Dombey and Son (1846–48), David Copperfield (1849–50), Bleak
House (1852–53), Little Dorrit(1855–57), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great
Expectations (1860–61).* There is a gradual trend in his fiction towards darker themes
which mirrors a tendency in much of the writing of the 19th century.
*William Thackeray* was Dickens' great rival in the first half of Queen Victoria's reign.
With a similar style but a slightly more detached, acerbic, and barbed satirical view of his
characters, he also tended to depict a more middle-class society than Dickens did. He is
best known for his novel Vanity Fair (1848), subtitled A Novel without a Hero, which is an
example of a form popular in Victorian literature: a historical novel in which recent
history is depicted.
*Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë* produced notable works of the period, although these
were not immediately appreciated by Victorian critics. Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily's
only work, is an example of Gothic Romanticism from a woman's point of view, which
examines class, myth, and gender. Jane Eyre (1847), by her sister Charlotte, is another
major nineteenth-century novel that has gothic themes. Anne's second novel The Tenant
of Wildfell Hall (1848), written in a realistic rather than romantic style, is mainly considered
to be the first sustained feminist novel.
Later in this period *George Eliot* (Mary Ann Evans), published The Mill on the Floss in
1860, and in 1872 her most famous work Middlemarch. Like the Brontës she published
under a masculine pseudonym.
In the later decades of the Victorian era, Thomas Hardy was the most important novelist.
His works include Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), Far from the Madding
Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge(1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891),
and Jude the Obscure (1895).
Other significant novelists of this era were Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865), Anthony
Trollope (1815–1882), George Meredith(1828–1909), and George Gissing (1857–1903).
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