3. Historical Context
• The Napoleonic Wars followed by
economic recession
• Union with Ireland
• INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, CHARTISM,
REFORM BILL
• Development of democracy, sudden
urbanization, development of capitalism
• Reign of Queen Victoria
4. Description of The Age of the
Romantic Movement (1798-1832)
• The first half place emphasis on the
individual, nature, “an organic concept of
art”
• Skepticism and cynicism “abusive
parody and satire
• Optimism mixed with revolutionary spirit
5. Description of the Early Victorian
Age (1832-1870)
• Deeper feel for Industrial Revolution
• Bigger impact of science on religion and
philosophy
• Romantic feeling came into conflict with
world around it “a literature of doubt
and questioning”
6. Overall Description
• “Great age for the novel”
• “Serious critical and social debate in
prose”
• “Weakest period of English stage since
Elizabeth I” with “blind idolatry of
Shakespeare” and “bound by PATENT
THEATERS” and the STAR SYSTEM
7. Major Authors and Works: The
Poets
• William Wordsworth- “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
• Samuel Coleridge- “Kubla Khan”
• Percy Shelley- married to Mary Shelley
• John Keats- “When I Have Fears I may Cease to Be”
• Lord Byron- Mary Shelley thought of Frankenstein while
at his house
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson- “The Charge of the Light
Brigade”
• Matthew Arnold- “Calm Soul of All Things”
• Pre-Raphaelites
• Robert Browning- Sordello
8. Major Authors and Works: The
Novelists
• William Godwin- Mary Shelley’s father
• Walter Scott- Ivanhoe
• Jane Austen- Pride and Prejudice
• Charlotte Brontë- Jane Eyre
• Emily Brontë- Wuthering Heights
• William Makepeace Thackeray- Vanity Fair
• Charles Dickens- A Tale of Two Cities
• Anthony Trollope- Orley Farm
• Eliot- The Mill on the Floss
9. Major Authors and Works: The
Prose Writers
• Thomas Carlyle- Worship of Yea and No
• John Ruskin- Modern Painters
• Thomas Macaulay- The History of
England from the Accession of James the
Second
• Walter Pater- Studies in Art and Poetry
• Newman- Apologia Pro Sutra
