English Literature: Its History And Its
Significance For The Life Of The
English-Speaking World
by William J. Long (adapted excerpt)
The Victorian Age (1850-1900)
When Victoria became queen, in 1837, English literature seemed
to have entered upon a period of lean years, in marked contrast
with the poetic fruitfulness of the Romantic Age. Because the
Victorian age was an age of democracy and education, it was an
age of comparative peace. England began to think less of the
pomp and false glitter of fighting, and more of its moral evils, as
the nation realized that it is the common people who bear the
burden and the sorrow of poverty, while the privileged classes
reap most of the financial and political rewards. Moreover, with
the growth of trade and of friendly foreign relations, it became
evident that the social equality for which England was contending
at home belonged to the whole race of men; that brotherhood is
universal, not insular; that a question of justice is never settled by
fighting wars.
The romantic revival had done its work, and England entered
upon a new free period, in which every form of literature, from
pure romance to gross realism, struggled for expression. First,
though the age produced many poets, this was emphatically an
age of prose. And since the number of readers had increased a
thousandfold with the spread of popular education, it was the age
of the newspaper, the magazine, and the modern novel-the first
two being the story of the world's daily life. The novel was a
pleasant form of literary entertainment, as well as our most
successful method of presenting modern problems and modern
ideals. The novel, in this age, filled a place which the drama held
in the days of Elizabeth, and never before had the novel
appeared in such numbers and in such perfection.
The second marked characteristic of the age is that literature
seemed to depart from the purely artistic standard and to be
21
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