Pages

Monday, 19 March 2012

Victorian Literature


Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901).      It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century. The 19th century saw the novel become the leading form of literature in English. The works by pre-Victorian writers such as Jane Austen and Walter Scott had perfected both closely-observed social satire and adventure stories. Popular works opened a market for the novel amongst a reading public. The 19th century is often regarded as a high point in British literature as well as in other countries such as France, the United States and Russian Books, and novels in particular, became ubiquitous, and the "Victorian novelist" created legacy works with continuing appeal.
Significant Victorian novelists and poets include:
H.G. Wells
Charles Dickens is a prime exemplar of 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 read authors of that time. His first real novel, The Pickwick Papers, written at only twenty-five, was an overnight success, and all his subsequent works sold extremely well. He worked diligently and prolifically to produce entertaining writing the public wanted, but also to offer commentary on social challenges of the era. The comedy of his first novel has a satirical edge which pervades his writings. These deal with the plight of the poor and oppressed and end with a ghost story cut short by his death. The slow trend in his fiction towards darker themes is mirrored in much of the writing of the century, and literature after his death in 1870 is notably different from that at the start of the era.
The style of the Victorian novel
Victorian novels tend to be idealized portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance, love and luck win out in the end; virtue would be rewarded and wrongdoers are suitably punished. They tended to be of an improving nature with a central moral lesson at heart. While this formula was the basis for much of earlier Victorian fiction, the situation became more complex as the century progressed.
Other Literature
Children's literature
The Victorians are sometimes credited with 'inventing childhood', partly via their efforts to stop child labor 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. M. 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. Other genres include nonsense verse, poetry which required a child-like interest (e.g. Lewis Carroll). School stories flourished: Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldaysand Kipling's Stalky & Co. are classics.
Poetry and drama
Poetry in a sense settled down from the upheavals of the Romantic era and much of the work of the time is seen as a bridge between this earlier era and the modernist poetry of the next century. Alfred Lord Tennyson held the poet laureateship for over forty years. Some Victorian poetry highly regarded at the time, such as William Ernest Henley's Invictus, is now seen asjingoistic and bombastic, but Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade was a fierce criticism of a famous military blunder; a pillar of the establishment not failing to attack the establishment. Comic verse abounded in the Victorian era. Magazines such asPunch magazine and Fun magazine teemed with humorous invention and were aimed at a well-educated readership. The most famous collection of Victorian comic verse is the Bab Ballads.
The husband and wife poetry team of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning conducted their love affair through verse and produced many tender and passionate poems. Both Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote poems which sit somewhere in between the exultation of nature of the Romantic Poetry and the Georgian Poetry of the early 20th century. Arnold's works hearken forward to 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 behavior 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 Rossetticontemporaneously regarded as the chief poet amongst them, although his sister Christina is now held by scholars to be a stronger poet.
In dramatic, farces, musical burlesques, extravaganzas and comic operas competed with Shakespeare productions and serious drama by the likes of James Planché and Thomas William Robertson. In 1855, the German Reed Entertainmentsbegan a process of elevating the level of musical theatre in Britain that culminated in the famous series of comic operas byGilbert and Sullivan and were followed by the 1890s with the first Edwardian musical comedies. The first play to achieve 500 consecutive performances was the London comedy Our Boys by H. J. Byron, opening in 1875.
Wilde's 1895 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.
                      
                
             Arnold
Arnold was born in December 24, 1822 at Laleham-on-Thames in England.  (1822-12-24)
England.  Died April 15, 1888 (1888-04-16) England Occupation Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools Nationality British Period Victorian Genres Poetry; Literary, Social and Religious Criticism Notable work(s) "Dover Beach", "The Scholar-Gipsy", "Thyrsis", Culture and Anarchy, Literature and Dogma
                                                                    
                                                                       Arnold (1822-1888)
Arnold was born in December 24, 1822 at Laleham-on-Thames in England.  (1822-12-24)
England.  Died April 15, 1888 (1888-04-16) England Occupation Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools Nationality British Period Victorian Genres Poetry; Literary, Social and Religious Criticism Notable work(s) "Dover Beach", "The Scholar-Gipsy", "Thyrsis", Culture and Anarchy, Literature and Dogma

Literary career

In 1852, Arnold published his second volume of poems, Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems. In 1853, he published Poems: A New Edition, a selection from the two earlier volumes famously excluding Empedocles on Etna, but adding new poems, Sohrab and Rustum and The Scholar Gipsy. In 1854, Poems: Second Series appeared; also a selection, it included the new poem,
Arnold was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1857. He was the first to deliver his lectures in English rather than Latin. He was re-elected in 1862. On Translating Homer (1861) and the initial thoughts that Arnold would transform into Culture and Anarchy were among the fruits of the Oxford lectures. In 1859, he conducted the first of three trips to the continent at the behest of parliament to study European educational practices. He self-published The Popular Education of France (1861), the introduction to which was later published under the title Democracy (1879)
In 1865, Arnold published Essays in Criticism: First Series. Essays in Criticism: Second Series would not appear until November 1888, shortly after his untimely death. In 1866, he published Thyrsis, his elegy to Clough who had died in 1861. Culture and Anarchy, Arnold's major work in social criticism (and one of the few pieces of his prose work currently in print) was published in 1869. Literature and Dogma, Arnold's major work in religious criticism appeared in 1873. In 1883 and 1884, Arnold toured the United States delivering lectures on education, democracy and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1883.
In 1886, he retired from school inspection and made another trip to America. Arnold died suddenly in 1888 of heart failure, when running to meet a tram that would have taken him to the Liverpool Landing Stage to see his daughter, who was visiting from the United States where she had moved after marrying an American.

Robert Browning
Robert Browning was born in 7 May, 1812 at Camberwell, in London.  (1812-05-07)
Italy Occupation Poet Notable work(s) The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Porphyria's Lover, The Ring and the Book, Men and Women, My Last Duchess
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Complete list of works
Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1833)
Paracelsus (1835)
  Strafford (play) (1837)
Sordello (1840)
   Bells and Pomegranates No. I: Pippa Passes (play) (1841)
  Bells and Pomegranates No. II: King Victor and King Charles (play) (1842)
 Bells and Pomegranates No. III: Dramatic Lyrics (1842)
“Porphyria’s Lover”
"Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”
“My Last Duchess”
"The Pied Piper of Hamelin"
"Count Gismond"
"Johannes Agricola in Maditation"
 Bells and Pomegranates No. IV: The Return of the Druses (play) (1843)
Bells and Pomegranates No. V: A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (play) (1843)
Bells and Pomegranates No. VI: Colombe's Birthday (play) (1844)
Bells and Pomegranates No. VII: Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)
"The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church"
Bells and Pomegranates No. VIII: Luria and A Soul's Tragedy (plays) (1846)
Men and Women (1855)
"A Grammarian's Funeral"
"An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician"
Balaustion's Adventure (1871)
Fifine at the Fair (1872)
Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, or, Turf and Towers (1873)
Aristophanes' Apology (1875)
The Inn Album (1875)
The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1877)
Memorial plaque: "In Loving Memory of Louisa A. M. Mc Grigor Commandant V.A.D. Cornwall 22. Who died on service, March 31, 1917. Erected by her fellow workers in the British Red Cross Society, Women Unionist Association, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and Friends."
Folloed by a quote from Robert Browning's Epilogue to Asolando.
One who never turned her back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted. wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake
La Saisiaz and The Two Poets of Croisic (1878)
Dramatic Idylls (1879)
Dramatic Idylls: Second Series (1880)
Jocoseria (1883)
Parleyings with Certain People of Importance In Their Day (1887)
Asolando (1889)
           Prospice
Charles Dickens
                                                                                                                          
Born Charles John Huffam Dickens                                              Charles John Dickens   (1812 - 1870)
7 February 1812(1812-02-07)
Charles John Dickens was born in 7 February 1812, at Landport  in England.
Notable works Sketches by Boz, The Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, A Christmas Carol,Martin Chuzzlewit, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Hard Times, Our Mutual Friend, The Pickwick Papers Spouse Catherine Thomson Hogarth Children Charles Dickens, Jr., Mary Dickens, Kate Perugini,Walter Landor Dickens, Francis, Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens, Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens, Henry Fielding Dickens,Dora Annie Dickens, and Edward Dickens
Charles Dickens
Main article:
Charles Dickens published over a dozen major novels, a large number of short stories (including a number of Christmas-themed stories), a handful of plays, and several non-fiction books. Dickens's novels were initially serialised in weekly and monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats.
Novels
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club(Monthly serial, April 1836 to November 1837)
The Adventures of Oliver Twist (Monthly serial in Bentley's Miscellany, February 1837 to April 1839)
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Monthly  serial, April 1838 to October 1839)
The Old Curiosity Shop (Weekly serial in Master Humphrey's Clock, 25 April 1840, to 6 February 1841)
Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty (Weekly serial in Master Humphrey's Clock, 13 February 1841, to 27 November 1841)
The Christmas books:
A Christmas Carol (1843)
The Chimes (1844)
The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)
The Battle of Life (1846)
The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848)
The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (Monthly serial, January 1843 to July 1844)
Dombey and Son (Monthly serial, October 1846 to April 1848)
David Copperfield (Monthly serial, May 1849 to November 1850)
Bleak House (Monthly serial, March 1852 to September 1853)
Hard Times: For These Times (Weekly serial in Household Words, 1 April 1854, to 12 August 1854)
Little Dorrit (Monthly serial, December 1855 to June 1857)
A Tale of Two Cities (Weekly serial in All the Year Round, 30 April 1859, to 26 November 1859)
Great Expectations (Weekly serial in All the Year Round, 1 December 1860 to 3 August 1861)
Our Mutual Friend (Monthly serial, May 1864 to November 1865)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Monthly serial, April 1870 to September 1870. Only six of twelve planned numbers completed)
Short story collections
The Mudfog Papers (1837) in Bentley's Miscellany magazine
Reprinted Pieces (1861)
Christmas numbers of Household Wordsmagazine:What Christmas Is, as We Grow Older (1851)
A Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire (1852)
Another Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire (1853)
The Seven Poor Travellers (1854)
The Holly-Tree Inn (1855)
The Wreck of the "Golden Mary" (1856)
The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857)
A House to Let (1858)
Christmas numbers of All the Year Round magazine:
The Haunted House (1859)
A Message From the Sea (1860)
Tom Tiddler's Ground (1861)
Somebody's Luggage (1862)
Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings (1863)
Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy (1864)
Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions (1865)
Mugby Junction (1866)
No Thoroughfare (1867)
Selected non-fiction, poetry, and plays
The Village Coquettes(Plays, 1836)The Fine Old English Gentleman (poetry,1841)
Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi (1838)
American Notes: For General Circulation (1842)
Pictures from Italy (1846)
The Life of Our Lord: As written for his children (1849)
A Child's History of England (1853)
The Frozen Deep (play, 1857)
Speeches, Letters and Sayings (1870)
George Eliot
George Eliot (1819-1880)
George Eliot was born in 22 November 1819, at South Farm (Arbury Hall), Nuneaton in Warwickshire.
Novels
Adam Bede, 1859
Silas Marner, 1861
Romola, 1863
Middlemarch, 1871–72
Poetry
The Spanish Gypsy (a dramatic poem), 1868
Agatha, 1869
Armgart, 1871
Stradivarius, 1873
The Legend of Jubal, 1874
Arion, 1874
A Minor Prophet, 1874
A College Breakfast Party, 1879
The Death of Moses, 1879
From a London Drawing Room
Count That Day Lost
I Grant You Ample Leave
Other
Translation of "The Essence of Christianity" by Ludwig Feuerbach, 1854
The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton
Mr Gilfil's Love Story
Janet's Repentance

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Partial list of works

From Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830):
The Dying Swan
From Poems (1833):
The Lady of Shalott (1832, 1842) - three versions painted by J.W. Waterhouse (1888, 1894 and 1916). Also put to music byLoreena McKennitt on her album The Visit (1991).
From Poems (1842):
"Ulysses" (1833)
From The Princess; A Medley (1847)
Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal - it later appeared as a song in the film Vanity Fair, with musical arrangement by Mychael Danna
The Eagle (1851)
The Sister's Shame
From Maud; A Monodrama (1855/1856)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) - an early recording exists of Tennyson reading this.
From Enoch Arden and Other Poems (1862/1864)
The Brook - contains the line "For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever" which inspired the naming of a men's club in New York City.
The Window - Song cycle with Arthur Sullivan. (1871)
Harold (1876) - began a revival of interest in King Harold
Idylls of the King (composed 1833-1874)
The Foresters - a play with incidental music by Arthur Sullivan (1891)
Kapiolani (published after his death by Hallam Tennyson)
George MacDonald
                                                                
George MacDonald (1824-1905)

Partial list of works

Poems (1857)
Phantastes (1858)
David Elginbrod (1863) (republished as The Tutor's First Love)
The Portent (1864)
Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865) (republished as The Maiden's Bequest)
Robert Falconer (1868) (republished as The Musician's Quest)
England's Antiphon (1868, 1874)
Wilfrid Cumbermede (1871, 1872)
The Vicar's Daughter (1871, 1872)
Malcolm (1875) (republished as a two-volume work containing The Fisherman's Lady and The Marquis' Secret)
The Lost Princess (1875) [alternative title: * The Wise Woman: A Parable
Exotics (1876)
Thomas Wingfold, Curate (1876) (republished as The Curate's Awakening)
The Marquis of Lossie (1877) (republished as The Marquis’ Secret)
Paul Faber, Surgeon (1879) (republished as The Lady's Confession)
Sir Gibbie (1879) (republished as The Baronet's Song)
Mary Marston (1881) (republished as A Daughter's Devotion)
Warlock O' Glenwarlock (also entitled The Laird's Inheritance or Castle Warlock)
Weighed and Wanting (1882) (republished as A Gentlewoman's Choice)
Donal Grant (1883) (republished as The Shepherd's Castle) Companion story of Gibbie and his friend Donal
Preface to Letters from Hell by LWJS (1884)
What's Mine's Mine (1886) (republished as The Highlander's Last Song)
Home Again, a Tale (1887) (republished as The Poet's Homecoming)
The Elect Lady (1888) (republished as The Landlady's Master)
There and Back (1891 (republished as The Baron's Apprenticeship  
Heather and Snow (1893) (republished as The Peasant Girl's Dream)
The Poetical Works (1893) (including many previously unpublished poems)
Lilith (1895)
Salted with Fire (1896) (republished as The Minister's Restoration)
Evenor (1972 (collection of three stories)
Gerard Manley
Gerard Manley (1844(1844-07-28) - 1889)(1889-06-08)
Early life and family
Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford, East of London, as the first of eight children to Manley and Catherine (Smith) Hopkins. His father founded a marine insurance firm and, at one time, was the British consul general in Hawaii.
He was also, for a time, the church warden and a published writer whose works included A Philosopher's Stone and Other Poems(1843), Pietas Metrica (1849), and Spicelegium Poeticum, A Gathering of Verses by Manley Hopkins (1892). He reviewed poetry for The Times and wrote one novel. Catherine (Smith) Hopkins was the daughter of a London physician, particularly fond of music and of reading, especially German philosophy, literature and the novels of Dickens. Both parents were deeply religious High Church Anglicans. Catherine's sister, Maria Smith Giberne, taught her nephew Gerard to sketch. The interest was supported by his uncle, Edward Smith, his great-uncle, the professional artist Richard James Lane and many other family members. Hopkins first ambitions were to be a painter, and he would continue to sketch throughout his life, inspired, as an adult, by the work of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites.
Manley Hopkins
Manley Hopkins moved his family to Hampstead in 1852, near to where John Keats had lived thirty years before and close to the wide green spaces of Hampstead Heath. At ten years old Gerard Manley Hopkins was sent to board at Highgate School (1854–1863) and, while studying Keats' poetry, composed "The Escorial" (1860), his earliest poem extant. Here he practised early attempts at asceticism. He once argued that most people drank more liquids than they really needed and bet that he could go without drinking for a week. He persisted until his tongue was black and he collapsed at drill. On another occasion, he abstained from salt for a week.
.                                                                                                   Manley Hopkins (1852-1925)
Selected poems

Abraham Stoker 
Abraham Stoker (1847-1912)
(1847-11-08)
Novels
Bram Stoker Commemorative Plaque, Whitby, England (2002)
Dracula (1897)
Miss Betty (1898)
The Man (aka: The Gates of Life) (1905)
Lady Athlyne (1908)
The Lair of the White Worm (aka: The Garden of Evil) (1911)
Short story collections
Under the Sunset (1881), comprising eight fairy tales for children.
Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914), published posthumously by Florence Stoker
Uncollected stories
"The Bridal of Death" (alternate ending to The Jewel of Seven Stars)
"Buried Treasures"
"The Chain of Destiny"
"The Crystal Cup"
"The Dualitists; or, The Death Doom of the Double Born"
"Lord Castleton Explains" (chapter 10 of The Fate of Fenella)
"The Gombeen Man" (chapter 3 of The Snake's Pass)
"In the Valley of the Shadow"
"The Man from Shorrox"
"Midnight Tales"
"The Red Stockade"
"The Seer" (chapters 1 and 2 of The Mystery of the Sea)
Non-fiction
The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland (1879)
A Glimpse of America (1886)
Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)