1833 Slavery abolished in British

empire.

1837 Victoria becomes queen.

1839 Michael Faraday offers general
theory of electricity.

1843 William Wordsworth becomes a
poet laureate.

1850 Elizabeth Barrett Browning
publishes Sonnets from the
Portuguese

1859 Charles Darwin publishes On
the Origin of Species

1860 Florence Nightingale founds
school for nurses.

1865 London Fire Department
established.

1865 Lewis Carroll publishes
Alices Adventures in
Wonderland

1868 Robert Browning publishes
The Ring and the Book

1880 Joseph Swan installs first
electric lighting.

1884 First book (A-ant) of Oxford
English Dictionary published

1887 First Sherlock Holmes tale
published.

1891 Thomas Hardy publishes Tess
of the dUrbervilles

1896 A.E. Housman publishes A
Shropshire Lad

1901 Queen Victoria dies.
During the sixty-four years of Queen
Victorias reign, from 1837 to 1901,
Britains booming economy and rapid
expansion encouraged great optimism.
Britain became the world leader in
manufacturing.
Economic and military power,
especially naval power, helped Britain
acquire new colonies in far-flung
parts of the globe.

All was not really right with the
world of industrial England.
Writers exposed brutal factory
conditions and stinking slums, the
dark underside of a manufacturing
economy.
Annoyed by the reformers and radicals
of many sorts, Victorian leaders did
take steps to expand democracy and
better the lot of the poor.
Two key issues trade policy and
electoral reform dominated domestic
politics during the first half of the
Victorian Era.

The trade controversy centered on the
Corn Laws, which had long placed high
tax on corn (grain).
These laws discouraged food imports
and helped British landlords and
farmers keep food prices high, which
angered the poorer classes.
Reform came in 1846 when
Parliament, confronting a massive
famine in Ireland (1845 1849),
sought to increase the food supply by
suspending the Corn Laws.
Over the following decade, the free
trade policy was established.
The other burning issue during the age
involved strengthening democracy.

In 1838, the London radical William
Lovett drew up a Peoples Charter
demanding universal suffrage for all
males, not just wealthy and middle
classes.
Renewed demands for electoral change
led to the Second Reform Bill of 1867,
which added 938,000 people to the
number of voters by granting voting
rights urban workingmen.
Two further Acts, the Third Reform
Act (1884-1885) and the
Redistribution Act (1885), advanced
the country toward universal male
suffrage.
Women were then allowed to attend
universities.

Parliament passed laws to reduce
working hours for women and children,
to establish a system of free grammar
schools and to legalize trade unions.
Though the Liberals (formerly the
Whigs) advocated limits to British
rule, the Empire continued to grow.

Britain acquired Hong Kong from China
in 1842.

Then, after a rebellion in 1857 to 1858
by sepoys (Indian troops under British
command), Britain shouldered aside the
British East India Company and took
direct control of India.

In the last three decades of Victorias
rule, Britain expanded its influence in
Africa.
Victorian thinkers often disagreed on
the crucial issues of their times, but
they shared a deep confidence in
humanitys ability to better itself.

The Victorians fought with the
religious and philosophical as well as
the social implications of modern life.

The theory of evolution proposed by
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) in On
the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection (1859), stirred
bitter controversy.

Some Victorian thinkers took Darwins
theory as a direct challenge to biblical
truth and traditional religious faith.
Others accepted both Darwin and
religion, striving to reconcile scientific
and religious insights.
Literature of the Period
Romanticism continued to influence
Victorian writers, but it had by now
become part of the mainstream culture.

When Victorian writers confronted the
rapid technological and social changes, a
literary movement known as Realism was
born.
The literature of this movement
focused on ordinary people facing day-
to-day problems of life, an emphasis
that reflected the trend toward
democracy and growing middle-class
audience for literature.
Literature of the Period
A related movement, known as
Naturalism, sought to put the spirit of
scientific observation to literary use.

Naturalists crammed their novels with
gritty details the sour smell of
poverty, the harsh sounds of factory life
often with the aim of promoting social
reform.
They directly contradicted the
Romantic idea that nature mirrored
human feelings and instead portrayed
nature as harsh and unsympathetic to
the human suffering it caused.
Literature of the Period
Rather than embracing real life as
the advocates of Realism did, the
poets and painters of the Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood, formed in
1848, rejected the ugliness of
industrial life.
They turned for inspiration to the
spiritual intensity of medieval Italian
art, the art before the time of the
painter Raphael (1483-1520).
The Victorian Age produced a large
and diverse body of poetry. The
Romantic style predominated at first,
but Realism and Naturalism gained
force as time went on.

VICTORIAN POETRY
The most popular poet of the era and
was influenced by earlier Romantic
poets.

His verse displays a keen sense of the
music of language and some of his
more sentimental lyrics even
reappeared in popular songs.

Tennyson also revealed a deeper, more
thoughtful side in such powerful poem
as Ulysses and In Memoriam
(1850).

He became poet laureate after
Wordsworth died in 1850.
VICTORIAN POETRY
He produced a body of poetry as diverse
as Tennysons, although in his lifetime he
never achieved equal public acclaim.

His works showed the influence of
Realism as he sought to portray
individuals without Romantic
authenticity.
Critics have admired his dramatic
monologues , or long speeches in which
a character reveals his or her
thoughts.
ELIZABETH BARETT
BROWNING
(1806-1861)
VICTORIAN POETRY
The wife of Robert Browning and was
more famous poet at the time of
their marriage.

Today, she is remembered mostly for
the beautiful loves poems she wrote
for her husband in Sonnets from the
Portuguese (1850)
VICTORIAN POETRY
One of the greatest Victorian poets who
focused on the bewildering confusion of
the Industrial Age.
He was troubled by the individuals close
ties to nature and with each other.
A forerunner of the more pessimistic
Naturalist poets, such as Hardy and
Housman.

and
VICTORIAN POETRY
Both were pessimistic Naturalist
poets.

For them, lifes disappointments were
a frequent subject.

VICTORIAN POETRY
His poetry spoke to the expansive spirit
of the age, ranging across the wideness of
the Empire.

He wrote action-packed narrative poems
like Gunga Din and poem written in
the colourful speech of working-class
soldiers in Barrack-Room Ballads.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
(1844-1889)

While Tennysons and Kiplings well-
known lyrics turned up as popular
songs, Hopkins remained unpublished
during his own century.

His innovative rhythms and deeply felt
religious verse would inspire the
twentieth-century Modernist poets.

Members of the new middle class
were avid readers and they loved
novels, especially those novels that
reflected the major social issues during
the age.
THE BRONTE SISTERS:
Emily Bronte (1818-1848),
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)
and the lesser-known Anne Bronte
(1820-1849)

Romanticism heavily influenced these
early Victorian novelists.
The sister were among the six children
raised by their father and aunt in the
isolation of the northern English
village.
They were bright and imaginative and
read great authors like Shakespeare
and Byron.

Emily and Charlotte later created
powerful works of fiction.
Emilys classic Wuthering Heights
(1847) tells the tale of the doomed
passion of Catherine Earnshaw to
Heathcliff.
Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre (1847),
a novel recounting the adventures of a
governess who falls in love with her
mysterious employer, Mr. Rochester.
Regarded by many critics as the
greatest novelist of the period.

Dickens filled his novels with poignant,
realistic details that dramatized the
contrast between rich and poor in
industrial England.

His novels abound in deliciously
eccentric characters whose every
peculiarity of speech and gesture
affirms how individual people are.

Among his greatest works are David
Copperfield (1849-1850), Bleak
House (1852-1853) and Our Mutual
Friend (1864-1865)