19th-century English literature

Prose, poetry, and drama written in English in the UK in the 1800s. The century was a period of great literary and social change, and it is useful to consider the literature of the period in relation to the social and political issues of the time, which include the Industrial Revolution, and the expansion of the British Empire. With the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne in 1837, the literary period until her death in 1901 is also known as the Victorian era. See also English literature.

Influences

Early 19th century The novel was possibly the most popular genre of the 19th century. Early 19th-century novels include those of English writer Jane Austen (including Sense and Sensibility, 1811 and Pride and Prejudice, 1813). Austen wrote novels of manners, often set in a social world set apart from the rest of England (often in a country house), and usually concerning the aristocracy and middle classes, but her characters increasingly reflect the wider range of her readership, which was increasingly female and middle class. Her style is one of irony and social satire.

19th-century prose Perhaps the most obvious successors to Austen are Anthony Trollope (Barchester Chronicles, 1855) and English novelists Charlotte and Emily Brontë. The Brontës (whose sister Anne was another, less well-known, writer) produced novels that were at once in the world of Austen's characters and yet were also influenced by Romanticism and the gothic novel. Charlotte Brontë's most famous novel, Jane Eyre (1847), can be seen as both a gothic novel, a romance, and as a book with a feminist message. Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë, is a darker work than those of Charlotte, and more gothic. Charlotte, Emily, and their brother, published under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, in an attempt to be accepted by a literary establishment that was almost exclusively male. However, their audience was largely female.

The social problem novel While Austen and the Brontës concentrated upon romantic love, later 19th-century prose fiction was to a great extent concentrated upon the problems of English society. English writers Mrs Gaskell (Mary Barton, 1845–7, North and South, 1855) and Charles Dickens wrote stories to highlight social injustice and iniquity. The works of both writers were serialized in magazines and reached a wider spectrum of people of people than ever before, increasing literacy levels among the working classes. The stories were often focused on problems that faced members of the working classes, and so they became powerful in exercising influence over their ideas and opinions. Oliver Twist (1837) by Dickens, for example, comments upon the treatment of orphans in a poorhouse, whereas Nicholas Nickleby (1838) is a comment upon cruelty in schools, and Bleak House (1853) was instrumental in causing a review on the laws regarding inheritance. No study of social and political creative writing would be complete without reference to George Eliot (Silas Marner, 1861; Middlemarch, 1871–72) and William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair, 1847–48), whose social observation and criticism, though less explicit, is nonetheless underpinning their work. The work of Thomas Hardy, although less overtly political and more tragic in its outlook, was concerned with social and scientific developments of the time, which can be seen in his works The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895).

The gothic novel The gothic novel continued to be so popular that writers in other genres incorporated it into their works. For example, English novelist Wilkie Collins wrote The Woman in White (1860), and Scottish writer Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). Both combine the genres of the gothic and detective fiction. The gothic novel form continued to develop with Dracula (1897) by Irish writer Bram Stoker, which approaches sexual allegory.

Children's fiction Exceptional children's authors include the English writers of nonsense Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865) and Edward Lear (Book of Nonsense, 1846).

Nonfiction prose Prose writers of the era commented upon diverse subjects, including history, philosophy, politics, and art. They include: British historian Thomas Macaulay (History of England, 1849–61); English theologian John Newman (Tracts for the Times, 1833–41); English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill (On the Subjection of Women, 1869); Scottish essayist and social historian Thomas Carlyle (On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, 1841); English critic on art and society John Ruskin (Modern Painters, 1843–60); and English art critic Walter Pater (Studies in the History of the Renaissance, 1873).

19th-century drama The most famous 19th-century drama is from the very end of the century and is dominated by the society plays of Irish writers George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Shaw's successful plays include Arms and the Man (1894), and, from the beginning of the 20th century, Man and Superman (1903), and Pygmalion (1913). His play Mrs Warren's Profession (1894) deals with a central character who escapes from the poverty trap of East End London by becoming a prostitute and is then unable to reform when she wants to. It was banned until 1902. Wilde's social comedies include A Woman of No Importance (1893) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Wilde also wrote a novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), as well as poetry and essays upon art and society. Another 19th-century playwright was the English Arthur Wing Pinero, whose works include the social drama The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893).

19th-century poetry The early poetry of the 19th century concentrates heavily on the work of Romanticism, and in the mid-19th century, on the art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Major poets include the English Alfred Tennyson, whose long series of poems on the Arthurian legends, ‘The Idylls of the King’ (1859–89) shows the influence of medievalism on 19th-century poetry. It is also a description of the destructive nature of the passions of men and women. Similar themes occur in several of the early poems of English poet Robert Browning, which were in the form of the dramatic monologue, spoken to the reader by a character who is not the poet. The work of English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins is more religious in theme and more adventurous in structure, and includes ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’ (1876), and ‘The Windhover’ and ‘Pied Beauty’ (both 1877). More specifically spiritual poetry includes Tennyson's ‘In Memoriam’ (1850), ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ (1872) and ‘Annus Domini’ (1874) by English poet Christina Rossetti and ‘Dover Beach’ (1867) by Matthew Arnold.