Victorian Literature: 1830-1900
HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS. 1. THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND. William Cobbett, from Rural Rides (1830). Peter Gaskell, from Artisans and Machinery (1836). The People's Charter (1837). James Key-Shuttleworth, from Recent Measures for the Promotion of Education in England (1839). Charles Dickens, from On Strike (1854). Henry Mayhew, from London Labour and the London Poor (1861). Walter Bagehot, from The English Constitution (1867). Sidney Webb, from The Basis of Socialism: Historic (1889). William Booth, from In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890). 2. FAITH, DOUBT, AND KNOWLEDGE. John Herschel, from A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830). Mary Somerville, from Personal Recollections (1874). Charles Lyell, from Principles of Geology (1830). William Whewell, from Astronomy and General Physics, Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1833). Charles Babbage, from On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers (1832). Robert Chambers, from Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844). Charles Christian Hennell, from An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity (1838). Benjamin Jowett, from On the Interpretation of Scripture (1860). John William Colenso, from The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined (1862). John Tyndall, from Address before the British Association Assembled at Belfast (1873). Annie Besant, from Autobiographical Sketches (1885). 3. GENDER AND SEXUALITY. Sarah Stickney Ellis, from The Women of England (1838). Sarah Lewis, from Woman's Mission (1839). Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, from A Brief Summary, in Plain Language, of the Most Important Laws of England Concerning Women (1854). Eliza Lynn Linton, The Girl of the Period (1868). The Ladies' National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act [Petition] (1869). Thomas Hughes, from The Manliness of Christ (1879). Labouchere Amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment Act (1885). John Addington Symonds, from Memoirs (1984). 4. EMPIRE AND TRAVEL. Austen Henry Layard, from A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh (1851). Richard Burton, from Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah (1855). Richard Burton, from The Lake Regions of Central Africa (1860). Isabel Burton, from The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton: The Story of Her Life (1897). George Otto Trevelyan, from The Indian Civil Service (1863). George Otto Trevelyan, from Cawnpore (1865). James Anthony Froude, from England and Her Colonies (1870). Edward Burnett Tylor, from Primitive Culture (1871). Henry Morton Stanley, from In Darkest Africa (1890). Mary Kingsley, from Travels in West Africa (1897). 5. THE FUNCTION OF POETRY. Arthur Henry Hallam, from On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry, and the Lyrical Poems of Alfred Tennyson (1831). George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), from Adam Bede (1859). Alfred Austin, from The Poetry of the Period (1870). Robert Buchanan, from The Fleshly School of Poetry: Mr. D. G. Rossetti (1871). Arthur Symons, from The Decadent Movement in Literature (1893). Arthur Symons, from The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899). AUTHORS. John Keble. Thomas Carlyle. Thomas Babington MacAuley. James Dawson Burn. John Henry Newman. William Barnes. Harriet Martineau. John Stuart Mill. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Alfred Tennyson. Charles Darwin . Edward Fitzgerald. Elizabeth Gaskell. Samuel Smiles. Robert Browning. Edward Lear. Emily Bronte. John Ruskin. Victoria. Arthur Hugh Clough. Jean Ingelow. Florence Nightingale. Herbert Spencer. Matthew Arnold. Frances Power Cobbe. Coventry Patmore. Adelaide Anne Procter. Thomas Henry Huxley. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. George Meredith. Margaret Oliphant. Christina Georgina Rossetti. Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). William Morris. Algernon Charles Swinburne. Augusta Webster. Walter Pater. Thomas Hardy. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Michael Field (Katharine Bradley 1846-1914). Edith Cooper 1862-1913. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wilde. A. E. Housman. Mary Coleridge. Amy Levy. William Butler Yeats. Rudyard Kipling. Ernest Dowson. Max Beerbohm.