Victorian Literature

Part I of Essay
The first decades (1830s to 1860s) of Queen Victoria's reign produced a vigorous and varied body of literature that attempted to come to terms with the current transformations of English society, but writers in the latter decades (1870s to 1900) withdrew into AESTHETICISM, ....

Part II of Essay
.... BRONTE in JANE EYRE dramatized the particular problems of creating a female identity. Among the writers of early Victorian nonfiction, Thomas CARLYLE in Past and Present (1843) argued for the re-creation in industrial England of the lost sense of community between social classes. In contrast, John Stuart MILL in ON LIBERTY spoke for the fullest development of the individual through freedom from social restraint. The foremost art critic of the time, John RUSKIN, articulated the assumptions of many contemporary critics by showing in The St ....