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Victorian Era Timeline

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 11, 2023 | Original: March 15, 2019

The Victorian Era was a time of vast political reform and social change, the Industrial Revolution , authors Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin , a railway and shipping boom, profound scientific discovery and the first telephone and telegraph. But the Victorian Era—the 63-year period from 1837-1901 that marked the reign of Queen Victoria —also saw a demise of rural life as cities and slums rapidly grew, long and regimented factory hours for many laborers, the bloody Jack the Ripper and even bloodier Crimean War .

Queen Victoria, who was born in 1819 and ascended the throne at age 18, was Britain’s second-longest reigning monarch (surpassed only by Queen Elizabeth II ). Her rule during one of Britain’s greatest eras saw the country create the world’s biggest empire, with one-fourth of the global population owing allegiance to the queen.

Here’s a timeline of innovations and events that helped define the Victorian Era.

May 24, 1819 : Alexandrina Victoria is born in Kensington Palace . As a royal princess, she is recognized as a potential heir to the throne of Great Britain.

Aug. 1, 1834 : The British empire abolishes slavery , and more than 800,000 formerly enslaved people in the British Caribbean are eventually set free. The government provides compensation to slave owners, but nothing to formerly enslaved people.

June 20, 1837 : Queen Victoria takes the crown at the age of 18. The granddaughter of King George III , her father died when she was just 8 months old, and her three uncles also died, putting her first in line as heir to the throne. An estimated 400,000 people thronged the streets of London for her coronation in Westminster Abbey .

July 25, 1837 : The first electric telegraph is sent between English inventor William Fothergill Cooke and scientist Charles Wheatstone, who went on to found The Electric Telegraph Company.

May 8, 1838 : The People’s Charter , the result of the Chartism protest movement, calls for a more democratic system including six points: the right to vote for men age 21 and older; no property qualification to run for Parliament ; annual elections; equal representation; payment for members of Parliament; and vote by secret ballot.

Sept. 17, 1838 : The first modern railroad line, the London-Birmingham Railway , opens, starting the steam-powered railway boom and revolutionizing travel.

Feb. 10, 1840 : Queen Victoria marries German Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, her first cousin. As queen, she was the one to propose. During their 21 years of marriage (until Albert died of typhoid in 1861) the couple had nine children. They also introduced many typically German Christmas traditions to Britain, such as decorated Christmas trees .

May 1, 1840 : The Penny Black, the world’s first postage stamp sold for one penny, is released in Britain, featuring a profile portrait of Queen Victoria. More than 70 million letters are sent within the next year, a number that tripled in two years. It’s soon copied in other countries, and the stamp is used for 40 years.

Dec. 19, 1843 : Charles Dickens, one of the era’s greatest writers, publishes A Christmas Carol . Other works from the author during this period—many featuring protests against class and economic inequality—include Oliver Twist , Great Expectations , David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby .

September 1845 : Ireland’s potato crop begins to fail from a widespread mold infestation, causing the Irish Potato Famine , also known as the Great Hunger, that leads to 1 million deaths and caused 1 to 2 million people to emigrate from the country, landing in various cities throughout North America and Great Britain.

May 1, 1851 : The brainchild of Prince Albert, the Great Exhibition opens in London’s Crystal Palace, with 10,000-plus exhibitors displaying the world’s technological wonders—from false teeth to farm machinery to telescopes. Six million visitors attend what would become the first world’s fair before it closes in October.

April 7, 1853 : Queen Victoria uses chloroform as an anesthetic during the delivery of her eighth child, Leopold. Though controversial at the time, Victoria’s embrace of anesthesia quickly popularized the medical advancement.

Dec. 24, 1853 : The Vaccination Act makes it mandatory for children born after Aug. 1, 1853, to be vaccinated against smallpox . Parents failing to comply are fined or imprisoned.

March 28, 1854 : France and Britain declare war on Russia, launching the Crimean War, which largely surrounds the protection of the rights of minority Christians in the Ottoman Empire. History’s most famous nurse, Florence Nightingale , helps reduce the death count by two-thirds by improving unsanitary conditions. An estimated 367,000 soldiers died in the two-year conflict.

Nov. 24, 1859 : The controversial On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin is published, presenting his theory of natural selection and challenging the theory of creation.

January 9, 1863 : The world’s first underground railway, the London Underground, opens. About 9.5 million people would ride the steam trains during their first year of operation.

Dec. 9, 1868 : Liberal William Gladstone defeats Conservative Benjamin Disraeli to become prime minister, a position he held for four non-consecutive terms. His legacy includes reform for Ireland, establishing an elementary education program and instituting secret ballot voting.

March 7, 1876 : Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell is awarded a patent on his invention of the telephone, and, three days later, famously makes the first phone call to Thomas Watson, his assistant.

May 1, 1876 : Under the direction of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, India , which has been under British rule since 1858, declares Queen Victoria Empress of India.

August 2, 1880 : The Elementary Education Act of 1880 makes school attendance mandatory for children from ages five to 10, effectively reducing the hours children can be forced to spend working in fields, mills, mines and factories.

Aug.-Nov. 1888 : An unknown killer named Jack the Ripper murders and mutilates five prostitutes in London, striking terror into the heart of the city.

May 26, 1897: The Irish novelist Bram Stoker publishes Dracula , the story of a now-legendary vampire of aristocratic bearing, inspired in part by his visit to ghostly ruins in the seaside Yorkshire town of Whitby.

Jan. 22, 1901 : Queen Victoria dies on the Isle of Wight at age 81, ending the Victorian Era. She is succeeded by Edward VII, her eldest son, who reigned until his death in 1910. At the time of her death, the British Empire extended over roughly one-fifth of the earth’s land surface, giving rise to the claim, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”

India from Queen Victoria’s time to independence. The History Press . Past Prime Ministers: William Ewart Gladstone. Gov.uk . Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconsfield. Gov.uk . An Introduction to Victorian England (1837-1901). English Heritage . What happened during the Victorian era? Royal Museums Greenwich . Queen Victoria uses chloroform in childbirth, 1853. Financial Times .

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The Late Victorian Period�1870-1901

• Decay of Victorian values
• British imperialism
• Irish question
• Bismarck's Germany became a rival power
• United States became a rival power
• Economic depression led to mass immigration
• Breakdown of Victorian values
• Mood of melancholy
• Aesthetic movement
• The beginning of the modern movement in literature
• Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings
• Prose of George Moore and Max Beerbohm
• Poetry of Ernest Dowson

The Role of Women

• The Woman Question
• Changing conditions of women’s work created by the Industrial Revolution
• The Factory Acts (1802-78) – regulations of the conditions of labor in mines and factories
• The Custody Act (1839) – gave a mother the right to petition the court for access to her minor children and custody of children under seven and later sixteen.
• The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act – established a civil divorce court
• Married Women’s Property Acts

Educational Opportunities for Women�

• First women’s college established in 1848 in London.
• By the end of Victoria’s reign, women could take degrees at twelve university colleges.

Working Conditions for Women

• Bad working conditions and underemployment drove thousands of women into prostitution.
• The only occupation at which an unmarried middle-class woman could earn a living and maintain some claim to gentility was that of a governess.

Victorian Women and the Home

• Victorian society was preoccupied with the very nature of women.
• Protected and enshrined within the home, her role was to create a place of peace where man could take refuge from the difficulties of modern life.

Literacy, Publication, and Reading

• By the end of the century, literacy was almost universal.
• Compulsory national education required to the age of ten.
• Due to technological advances, an explosion of things to read, including newspapers, periodicals, and books.
• Growth of the periodical
• Novels and short fiction were published iin serial form.
• The reading public expected literature to illuminate social problems.

The Victorian Novel

• The novel was the dominant form in Victorian literature.
• Victorian novels seek to represent a large and comprehensive social world, with a variety of classes.
• Victorian novels are realistic.
• Major theme is the place of the individual in society, the aspiration of the hero or heroine for love or social position.
• The protagonist’s search for fulfillment is emblematic of the human condition.
• For the first time, women were major writers: the Brontes. Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot.
• The Victorian novel was a principal form of entertainment.

Victorian Poetry

• Victorian poetry developed in the context of the novel. Poets sought new ways of telling stories in verse
• All of the Victorian poets show the strong influence of the Romantics, but they cannot sustain the confidence the Romantics felt in the power of the imagination.
• Victorian poets often rewrite Romantic poems with a sense of belatedness.
• Dramatic monologue – the idea of creating a lyric poem in the voice of a speaker ironically distinct from the poet is the great achievement of Victorian poetry.
• Victorian poetry is pictorial; poets use detail to construct visual images that represent the emotion or situation the poem concerns.
• Conflict t between private poetic self and public social role.

Victorian Drama

• The theater was a flourishing and popular institution during the Victorian period.
• The popularity of theater influenced other genres.
• Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde transformed British theater with their comic masterpieces.

Images of the Victorian Period

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7.1: The Victorian Era (1832–1901)

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Learning Objectives

• Recognize and evaluate the influence that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert exerted on the last half of the 19th century.
• Identify and explain the conflicts that defined the Victorian Era.
• Assess the ways in which these conflicts influenced Victorian literature.
• List, define, and give examples of typical forms of Victorian literature.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

The Victorian Age—the era when the sun never set on the British Empire, a time when the upper classes of Britain felt their society was the epitome of prosperity, progress, and virtue—Dickens’s words, however, could apply to his own Victorian age as well as they apply to the French Revolution setting of his novel. The Victorian Era was a time of contrasts—poverty as well as prosperity, degrading manual labor as well as technological progress, and depravity as well as virtue.

Snow Hill, Holburn, London (Anonymous).

Queen Victoria

The last seventy years of the 19th century were named for the long-reigning  Queen Victoria . The beginning of the Victorian Era may be rounded off to 1830 although many scholars mark the beginning from the passage of the first  Reform Bill  in 1832 or Victoria’s accession to the throne in 1837.

Victoria was only eighteen when her uncle William IV died and, having no surviving legitimate children, left the crown to his niece.

Victoria receives the news that she is Queen. Engraved by Emery Walker (1851–1933), from the picture by Henry Tanworth Wells (1828–1903) at Buckingham Palace.

Although by the 19th century Britain was a constitutional monarchy and the queen held little governing power, Victoria set the moral and political tone of her century. She became a symbol of decency, decorum, and duty.

Three years into her reign, Victoria married Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a region in what is now Germany.  Prince Albert  (given the title “Prince” by Victoria), although he had no actual power in the government, became one of Victoria’s chief advisors and a proponent of technological development in Britain. Together the couple had nine children who married into many of Europe’s royal and noble families. Victoria and Albert were considered the model of morality and respectable family life.

Balmoral Castle, the royal residence in Scotland.

Osborne House, the royal residence on the Isle of Wight.

When Prince Albert died in 1861, Victoria retired from public view, spending time in her Balmoral Castle in Scotland or Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Public opinion of the queen waned as years passed without her resuming her official duties. Even when she conceded to her advisors’ urging to return to London and to honor her public obligations, she continued to wear mourning until her own death. She also commissioned many public memorials to Prince Albert, including the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park (near the original location of the Crystal Palace), Royal Albert Hall, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The Albert Memorial, Hyde Park, London.

Royal Albert Hall, London.

The ornamental dome on the Victoria & Albert Museum was modeled after Queen Victoria’s favorite crown, visible in the portrait below, now on display with the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London.

Photograph by Alexander Bassano 1829–1913.

Queen Victoria reigned as Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India until her death in 1901.

Victorian Conflicts

The Victorian Era was, in many ways, paradoxically “the best times” and “the worst of times.”

Conflicts of Morality

Queen Victoria embodied ideals of virtue, modesty, and honor. In fact, the term  Victorian  has in the past been almost a synonym for prim, prudish behavior. At the same time, London and other British cities had countless gaming halls which provided venues not just for gambling but also  opium dens  and  prostitution . With the influx of population into the cities, desperate working class women turned to prostitution in attempts to support themselves and their children. Historian Judity Walkowitz reports that 19th century cities had 1 prostitute for every 12 adult males ( quoted in “The Great Social Evil”: Victorian Prostitution  by Prof. Christine Roth). Because of rampant sexually transmitted diseases among the British military, Parliament passed a series of  Contagious Diseases Acts  in the 1860s. These acts allowed police to detain any woman suspected of having a sexually transmitted disease and to force her to submit to exams that were considered humiliating for women at that time. Police needed little basis for such suspicions, often simply that a woman was poor.

Thomas Hardy’s poem “ The Ruined Maid ” reveals one reason many women turned to prostitution ( ruined  is a Victorian euphemism for an unmarried woman who has lost her virginity): in the poem, two young women converse. One woman, Melia, has left the farm to become a prostitute. When she meets a former friend, the contrast between the two women is pronounced: Melia is wearing fine clothes and is well fed and well cared for. The virtuous young woman, doing honest work on the farm, is wearing rags, digging potatoes by hand for subsistence, and suffering poor health. Hardy forces his readers to question what kind of society would reward prostitution while leaving the virtuous woman in abject poverty.

Conflicts of Technology and Industry

As an advocate of Victorian progress in science and industry,  Prince Albert commissioned the Great Exhibition of 1851 , a type of world’s fair where all the countries in the British Empire had displays and Britain could show off its prosperity to the rest of the world. Albert had the  Crystal Palace , a huge, modern building of glass and iron, built in Hyde Park to house the exhibition. After the  Great Exhibition  ended, the building was dismantled and moved and in its new location was destroyed by fire in 1936.

Video Clip 1

The Albert Memorial Symbol of the Victorian Age

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View a video lecture about the Albert Memorial.

The Albert Memorial commemorated all the same things the Great Exhibition vaunted. The four arms extending from the main statue represent four continents on which the British Empire had holdings: Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas—the sun literally never set on the British Empire. The figures on the frieze are great painters, poets, sculptors, musicians, and architects, representatives of the world’s accomplishments which culminated in the British Victorian culture. The mosaics on the canopy represent manufacturing, commerce, agriculture, and engineering—the foundations of British prosperity. And, of course, in the center, is the gilded figure of Albert himself.

Arm representing Africa.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 held in the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park, London. Source: Exterior: from Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851, 1854 interior: William Simpson (lithographer), Ackermann & Co. (publisher), 1851, V&A.

Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851 focused attention on the technological advances made during the Industrial Revolution. Although achievements such as the building of the railroad system and the implementation of mechanized factories produced great prosperity for some,  others suffered . Even before the Victorian Era, writers drew attention to these problems. Wordsworth’s “Michael,” for example, portrays a man whose family had made their living from their land for many generations. With the advent of machines to weave woolen cloth, their livelihood, their way of life, was lost. Blake’s “Chimney Sweeper” poems illustrate how  children suffered  in the industrial age.

A girl pulling a coal tub in a mine. Source: Parliamentary Papers 1842.

In addition, working conditions in factories were deplorable. With no safety regulations and no laws limiting either the number of hours people could be required to work or the age of factory workers, some factory owners were willing to sacrifice the well-being of their employees for greater profit. Children as young as five worked in factories and mines. Shelley’s “Men of England” and Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” are two examples of poems written specifically to address these problems.

The  1833 Factory Act  outlawed the employment of people under age eighteen at night, from 8:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. and limited the number of hours those under eighteen could work to twelve hours a day. For the first time, textile factory owners were forbidden to employ children under the age of nine. Children under age eleven could not work more than nine hours a day. The 1833 Factory Act also stipulated that children working in factories attend some type of school.

The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited females and boys under ten from working below ground in mines.

While these provisions hardly seem protective according to modern standards, the resulting conditions greatly improved  life for many children . Throughout Victoria’s reign, other parliamentary acts continued to alleviate working conditions in the ever-expanding Victorian industrial age.

Conflicts of Faith and Doubt

The scientific and technological advances celebrated at the Great Exhibition of 1851 led to another crisis in Victorian England: a crisis of faith and doubt. During the earlier part of the 19th century, the work of Charles Lyell and other geologists with their discoveries of fossilized remains of animals never seen before led to debates among scientists about the origins of these creatures. Debates about the age of the earth for some called into question the Genesis account of creation. In 1859, Charles Darwin published his  On the Origin of Species . Lyell and Darwin were among many who contributed to scientific theories that some saw as contradictory to established religious beliefs.

These scientific issues together with apparent lack of concern for appalling human conditions among the lower classes led some to doubt the presence of a divine being in the world and others to question the value of Christianity. Literature by writers such as Thomas Hardy and Matthew Arnold questions the presence of  religious faith  in the world.

At the same time, a conviction that Britain had a duty to spread Christianity around the world became one reason, or to some an excuse, for British imperialism.

Conflicts over Imperialism

A desire to expand industrial wealth and to have access to inexpensive raw materials led to the British occupation of countries around the globe. Although the United States and other European countries participated in this type of  imperialism , the  British Empire  was the largest and wealthiest of its time.

Along with their desire for material gain, many British saw the expansion of the British Empire as what  Rudyard Kipling referred to as “the white man’s burden,”  the responsibility of the British to bring their civilization and their way of life to what many considered inferior cultures. The result of this type of reasoning was often the destruction of local cultures and the oppression of local populations. In addition, a religious zeal to bring British religion to “heathen” peoples resulted in an influx of missionaries with the colonialists.

A backlash of protest against the concept of imperialism further divided a British nation already divided by class, religion, education, and wealth. While many British citizens sincerely desired to share their knowledge and beliefs with less developed nations, others found the movement a convenient excuse to expand their country’s, and their own, power and wealth.

Conflicts over Women’s Rights

“The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Woman’s Rights,’ with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.” Queen Victoria, 1870

quoted in Lytton Strachey’s Queen Victoria)

Ironically, as seen in this passage from a letter written in the royal third person by Queen Victoria, even the Queen opposed women’s rights. Nonetheless, the Victorian Era did see advancement in women’s political rights. The Married Woman’s Property Act of 1870 gave married women the right to own property they earned or acquired by inheritance. The upper classes were, of course, primarily concerned with inheritances. Before the passage of this act, money or property left to a married woman immediately belonged to her husband. By the late 19th century, women had some rights to their children and the right to leave their husbands because of physical abuse.

Education for women also improved. The idea Mary Wollstonecraft expressed in her “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” in 1792 very gradually, over more than 100 years, became a reality.

The first schools for the lower classes, girls or boys, were Sunday schools organized by churches to teach children basic literacy as well as religious lessons on the only day they were not working full time. Not until the  Education Act of 1870  were public schools in all areas of the country provided by law. Even then, attendance was not made compulsory for another ten years and then only for children aged five to ten.

Girls from the lower classes were included in the first public schools; however, girls from the upper classes continued to receive their basic education primarily in the home and in finishing schools for young ladies.  Cambridge University  and  Oxford University  established the first colleges for women in the latter half of the 19th century. Women were not allowed to attend the existing colleges for men and were not considered full members of the universities until the 20th century.

Although there was an active  woman’s suffrage  movement during the Victorian Era, women did not receive the right to vote until the 20th century.

Take the  Women’s Rights Quiz  on the BBC website to see how much you know about the rights of Victorian women.

The major change in the  English language during the 19th century  was the introduction of vocabulary to communicate new innovations, inventions, and concepts that resulted from the Industrial Age. Language mirrored class distinctions in both vocabulary and accents. The well educated upper classes were distinguished by their speech. Slang and an entirely differently accented English were the marks of the lower classes.

Forms of Literature

As noted in the Romantic Period introduction, a  novel , as defined in the Holman/Harmon  Handbook to Literature , is an “extended fictional prose narrative.” The  novel  was a dominant form in the Victorian Era. Many Victorian novelists—Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Wilke Collins, George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson—wrote  serial novels , novels published in installments over a period of time.  Serial novels  appeared in newspapers or magazines or could be published in independently printed booklets. As larger portions of the population became literate, demand for reading material grew. The  inexpensive booklets , each containing a chapter or other small portion of a novel, were affordable entertainment for the middle classes.

As in the Romantic Period, lyric poetry was popular in the Victorian Era. In addition to the lyric, the  verse novel , a  long narrative poem , such as Barrett Browning’s  Aurora Leigh , Tennyson’s  Idylls of the King , and Browning’s  The Ring and the Book , also was a prevalent form. Browning popularized the  dramatic monologue , a form of poetry which presents a speaker in a dramatic situation.

Non-Fiction Prose

The many conflicts of the Victorian Era provided fertile subject matter for non-fiction prose writers such as  Matthew Arnold ,  Thomas Carlyle ,  John Stuart Mill ,  John Henry Newman ,  Walter Pater , and  John Ruskin .

Popular forms of entertainment  such as the  music hall  and melodramas flourished during the Victorian Era as entertainment became divided along class lines. Popular music and musical plays, separated from legitimate theater in their own venues, provided leisure-time amusement for the middle classes. Robert Browning wrote  closet dramas , plays not actually intended for the stage.  Oscar Wilde  revived the comedy of manners with plays such as  Lady Windermere’s Fan  and  The Importance of Being Earnest .

Key Takeaways

• Although Queen Victoria symbolized decency, decorum, and duty, Victorian society spanned a wide spectrum of prosperity and poverty, education and ignorance, progress and regression
• Victorian society wrestled with conflicts of morality, technology and industry, faith and doubt, imperialism, and rights of women and ethnic minorities.
• Many Victorian writers addressed both sides of these conflicts in many forms of literature.
• Typical forms of Victorian literature include novels, serialized novels, lyric poetry, verse novels, dramatic monologues, non-fiction prose, and drama.

Victorianism

• “ All Change in the Victorian Age .” Bruce Robinson. Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Victorians. BBC History.
• “ Monuments and Dust: The Culture of Victorian London .” Michael Levenson, University of Virginia; David Trotter, University College London; Anthony Wohl, Vassar College. Institute for Advance Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia; Department of English University College London; Cambridge University Press.
• “ Movements and Currents in Nineteenth-Century British Thought .”  The Victorian Web . George P. Landow, Brown University.
• “ Overview of the Victorian Era .”  History in Focus . Anne Shepherd. University of London.
• “ Victorian and Victorianism .”  The Victorian Web . George P. Landow, Brown University.
• “ Victorian Britain .” History Trails. BBC.
• “ Victorian England: An Introduction .” Christine Roth, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.
• “ The Victorian Period .” Dr. Robert M. Kirschen, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
• “ Victorians 1837–1901 .” Liza Picard. The British Library.
• “ Victorians 1850–1901 .”  The National Archives .
• “ Queen Victoria .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody, Hartwick College.
• “ Addiction in the Nineteenth Century .” Dr. Susan Zieger, Stanford University.
• “ The Contagious Diseases Act .”  The Victorian Web .
• “ The Great Social Evil”: Victorian Prostitution . Prof. Christine Roth, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.
• “ Opium Dens and Opium Usage in Victorian England .”  Victorian History . Bruce Rosen, University of Tasmania.
• “ 1832 Reform Act .” Taking Liberties: The Struggle for Britain’s Freedoms and Rights. The British Library.
• “ The 1833 Factory Act [from Statutes of the Realm, 3 & 4 William IV, c. 103] .”  The Victorian Web . Dr. Marjie Bloy, National University of Singapore.
• “ 19th Century Poor Law Union and Workhouse Records .”  The National Archives . brief explanation of 1834 Poor Law and images.
• “ Child Labor .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody, Hartwick College.
• “ Corn Laws .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody, Hartwick College.
• “ The Crystal Palace Animation .” The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. University of Virginia.
• “ The Crystal Palace, or The Great Exhibition of 1851: An Overview .”  The Victorian Web .
• “ Great Exhibition .” Treasures.  The National Archives .
• “ The Great Exhibition .” History, Periods & Styles Features. The Victoria & Albert Museum.
• “ The Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace .”  Victoria Station .
• “ The Life of the Industrial Worker in Nineteenth-Century England .”  The Victorian Web . Laura Del Col, West Virginia University.
• “ The Reform Acts .”  The Victorian Web . Glenn Everett, University of Tennessee at Martin.
• “ Testimony Gathered by Ashley’s Mines Commission .”  The Victorian Web . Laura Del Col, West Virginia University.
• “ Victorian Science & Religion .”  The Victorian Web . Aileen Fyfe, National University of Ireland Galway and John van Wyhe, Cambridge University.

Conflict over Imperialism

• “ The British Empire .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody, Hartwick College.
• “ British Empire .”  The National Archives .
• “ Kipling’s Imperialism .”  The Victorian Web . David Cody, Hartwick College.
• “ The 1870 Education Act .” Living Heritage: Going to School.  www.parliament.uk .
• “ Gender Ideology & Separate Spheres .” Gender, Health, Medicine & Sexuality in Victorian England. Victoria & Albert Museum.
• “ Gender Matters .”  The Victorian Web .
• “ The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies .”  The Victorian Web . Helena Wojtczak.
• “‘ The Personal is Political’: Gender in Private & Public Life .” Gender, Health, Medicine & Sexuality in Victorian England. Victoria & Albert Museum.
• “ The Suffragettes in Parliament .” History of Parliament Podcasts.  www.parliament.uk .
• “ Suffragists .” Learning: Dreamers and Dissenters. The British Library.
• “ Victorian Britain: A Divided Nation ?” Education.  The National Archives .
• “ Women’s Status in Mid 19th-Century England: A Brief Overview .” Helena Wojtczak. Hastings Press.
• “ Women’s Rights Quiz .” Major Events of Victoria’s Reign. Victorians. BBC History.
• “ Women’s Work .” Prof. Pat Hudson, Cardiff University. Daily Life in Victorian Britain. Victorians. BBC History.

Victorian Language

• “ The Development of the English Language Following the Industrial Revolution .”  The Victorian Web . Jessica Courtney, University of Brighton (UK).
• “ The 19th Century Novel .”  Novels . Dr. Agatha Taormina, Extended Learning Institute of Northern Virginia Community College.
• “ Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Difficulties of Victorian Poetry .”  The Victorian Web . George P. Landow, Brown University.
• “ Justifying God’s Ways to Man (and Woman): The Victorian Long Poem .”  The Victorian Web . George P. Landow. Brown University.
• “ Literary Genre, Mode, and Style .”  The Victorian Web .
• “ Nineteenth Century Drama .”  Theatre Database .
• “ Progress of Journalism in the Victorian Era .”  Bartleby.com . The Growth of Journalism. rpt. from  The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes  (1907–21). Vol. XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two.
• “ Serial Publication .” Prof. Joel J. Brattin, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Dickens. Life and Career.  PBS.org .
• Some Questions to Use in Analyzing Novels . Prof. Stephen C. Behrendt, University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
• “ Studies of Victorian Literature .” Dr. John P. Farrell, University of Texas at Austin.
• “ Victorian Literature and Culture .” Prof. James Buzard.  MIT Open Courseware .
• “ Victorian Serial Novels .” Digital Collections. University of Victoria Libraries.
• “ Victorian Women Writers Project .” University of Indiana Digital Library Project.
• “ Why Read the Serial Versions of Victorian Novels? ”  The Victorian Web . Philip V. Allingham, Lakehead University.
• “ The Albert Memorial: Symbol of the Victorian Age .” Dr. Carol Lowe, McLennan Community College.
• “ The Great Exhibition .” Victorians. The British Library.
• “ The Rise of Technology and Industry .” Learning: Victorians. The British Library. images, slide shows, video, podcasts featuring all types of industry and technological advances in daily life, such as cooking and bathrooms.
• “ A Visitor’s Guide to the Great Exhibition, from ‘The Illustrated Exhibitor .’” The Great Exhibition. Victorians. The British Library.

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The Victorian Era

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Victorian Era

18th and 19th Century History

General Overview of the Victorian Era and Timeline

Queen Victoria – A Biography

Queen Victoria’s Empire

Queen Victoria – Her Reign Lasted 64 Years!

The Victorian Age – Victoria Becomes Queen at 18

The Victorian Age 1830–1901

Victorian Age – Introductory Notes to Literature

The Victorian Era and Queen Victoria

The Victorian Era – Change and Stability

The Victorian Era – An Overview of an Era

The Victorian Era – Society, Values, Culture

The Victorian Era – Values and Social Class System

Victorian Literature

Victorian Timeline

The Victorians

See Also: Industrial Revolution , Irish Potato Famine , Queen Victoria , Famous Brits

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VICTORIAN LITERATURE

Jul 20, 2014

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VICTORIAN LITERATURE. Dr. M. Fahmy Raiyah. CONTENTS. THE VICTORIAN PERIOD: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS - The British Empire - The Industrial Revolution The Impact of the Industrial Revolution I. The Emergence of Overcrowded Cities II. Child Labor

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VICTORIAN LITERATURE Dr. M. Fahmy Raiyah

CONTENTS • THE VICTORIAN PERIOD: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS - The British Empire - The Industrial Revolution The Impact of the Industrial Revolution I. The Emergence of Overcrowded Cities II. Child Labor - Cultural Context: Smith, Darwin, and Mill • LITERATURE - Literature of Social Protest - The Victorian Novel - Victorian Poetry

THE VICTORIAN ERA:SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS

THE VICTORIAN PERIOD The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 1837 until her death in 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined culture, great advancements in technology, and national self-confidence for Britain.During the Victorian age, Britain was the world's most powerful nation. By the end of Victoria's reign, the British empire extended over about one-fifth of the earth's surface. Like Elizabethan England, Victorian England saw great expansion of wealth, power, and culture.  But as Victorian England was a time of great ambition and grandeur, it was also a time of misery, squalor, and urban ugliness.

Queen Victoria (1837- 1901)

THE BRITISH EMPIRE Queen Victoria ruled over a vast and expanding empire, over which, it was said, the sun never set. The British considered the empire as a means of fulfilling the white man’s mission of civilizing the nations under their control and spreading Western values throughout the whole world.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION It started at the end of the eighteenth century, when theoretical knowledge and practical technology were connected. Scientific ideas were applied to the making of machines that transformed the way things were made and dramatically changed people’s lifestyles. A formerly agricultural nation was now based on urban and industrial growth. But as industry grew, it was accompanied by a rapid increase in the numbers of the urban working-class poor. Workers in the cities lived in miserable conditions. Urban squalor and misery were signs of a massive change in the English society.

The Age of Steam

Mass Production

The Impact of the Industrial Revolution I. The Emergence of Overcrowded Cities One result of the advance of technology was the unprecedented growth of cities. People, in search of work left the countryside to work in factories in the different cities of Britain. They had to live in very dirty and unhealthy conditions. There were too many workers and not enough houses. People were living like animals. Diseases raged, hunger, poverty, and deprivation prevailed, crime accelerated, and misery increased.

The old rural social pattern was receding under the impact of harsh industrialization

Gustav Doré

The homeless waiting for admission into a workhouse are depicted in this picture by Luke Fildes Applicants for Admission to a Casual WardLuke Fildes, 1874.

II.Child Labor Children were expected to help to support their families. They often worked long hours in dangerous jobs and in difficult situations for very little wages. For example, there were the climbing boys employed by the chimney sweeps, the little children who could scramble under the moving machinery to retrieve the cotton fluff; boys and girls working down the coal mines, crawling through tunnels too narrow and low to take an adult.

Chimney Sweeper

CULTURAL CONTEXT • ADAM SMITH: Smith’s economic ideas had great influence on Victorian thinking. In The Wealth of Nations (1776), advocated free trade and believed that the market is best left untouched.Government intervention only prevents the economy from righting itself.He therefore strongly opposed any government interference with business affairs. He was against trade restrictions and minimum wage laws as being harmful to a nation's economy.This laissez-faire policy of government non-intervention remained popular throughout the Victorian Era. Capitalists often twisted his words to oppose child labor laws, maximum working hours, and factory health codes. • CHARLES DARWIN: Darwin’s theory of evolution, proposed in his book The Origin of Species (1859), has transformed the way we think about the natural world. The book was extremely controversial because it implied that man was simply another form of animal and that people might have evolved from apes. Darwin was strongly attacked, particularly by the Church.The theory of evolution led to a crisis of faith and spiritual doubt among so many people. • JOHN STUART MILL: Mill was a champion of individual rights in his book On Liberty (1869), and a pioneer of women’s rights in The Subjection of Women (1869). Mill attacked the tyranny of the majority who would deny liberty to individuals through public opinion.

LITERATURE OF SOCIAL PROTEST The social and cultural background of the period has had a deep impact on literature of the Victorian period. Some works of literature protested the grim reality of the industrial age. Depicting the deplorable conditions in factories and mines, the plight of child labor, the discrimination against women, and other social issues, such literary works were a means of social reform. Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton was one of the first novels to warn against the problems of industrialization. Charles Dickens’ works Oliver Twist and Hard Times treated the themes of child abuse, poverty, urban squalor, crime, and corrupt educational systems.

THE VICTORIAN NOVEL The novel was the dominant genre in the Victorian period.  Charles Dickens (1812-1870) created a host of unforgettable characters in such novels as Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Hard Times, and A Tale of Two Cities. William Thackeray's (1811-1863) most famous work is Vanity Fair. Charlotte Bronte’s (1816–55) Jane Eyre and Emily Bronte’s (1818–48) Wuthering Heights are classics of English literature. George Eliot's (1819–80) most important works are  Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede. The major novelist of the later part of the period was Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), whose best works include Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, and Jude the Obscure.

VICTORIAN POETRY Many characteristics of romantic poetry continued in poetry of the Victorian period. • However, Victorian poetry, in general, is less subjective than the romantic. • An interest in the past, both the classical and the medieval, appears in the subjects, and in the use of mythological and historical allusions. • The dramatic monologue is used greatly by the poets. • The themes are more realistic, discussing such issues as child labor, the rights of women, science and religion. • Victorian poetry is mostly pictorial, heavily relying on visual imagery. • The elegy is one of the most popular poetic forms in the period, a form of poetry that laments the dead or the past. • Victorian poetry is often characterized by doubt and psychological conflicts. The greatest poets of the period are Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. Other important poets are Matthew Arnold, GerardManley Hopkins, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Thomas Hardy is considered the best poet of the late Victorians.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Alfred Tennyson Robert Browning Christina Rossetti Gerard Manley Hopkins Thomas Hardy

Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

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