The document provides an overview of Georgian literature from 1910-1936. It discusses some of the major writers of the period, including Jane Austen and Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein covered themes of knowledge, alienation, and society's mistreatment of others. The document also discusses the Georgian social class system and how it shaped modern Britain, leaving a lasting impact on literature, style, and society. The Georgians are seen as helping shape modernism through their contributions across various domains.

1. O VERVI EW
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Georgian Literature

3.  The Georgian era was a time of luxurious
architecture, literature, music, and style. It was the
era that made the modern world we know today. The
Georgians gave us many things, from some of our
most famous writers such as Jane Austen and Mary
Shelley to the industrial revolution. There was also
the third Georgian King, King George, who lost
American colonies, and went mad. And a class
system we still see today in modern Britain.

4.  The Georgian era brought us some great writers,
such as Jane Austen, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley,
John Keats, and Lord Byron. Interestingly, it is the
female writers, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen, who
have stood the test of time, and are as much
celebrated in today’s second Elizabethan era, as they
were during the era they lived in, the Georgian era.

5.  When we think of the Georgian era, we often think of
Austen’s worlds and a grand upper class lifestyle. We
rarely think of it as a gothic era, full of monsters, but
this is what makes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein a
welcome breath of fresh air. Shelly gives us
something completely different in her work,
something creative.

6.  Mary Shelley’s work of Frankenstein gives us a monster
created under the eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein.
Frankenstein covers some of the same themes as Austen’s
novels, including romance, and social class; however, there
are also the themes of knowledge, alienation, guilt, and
vegetarianism. Frankenstein forces us to think about the more
negative aspects of society, and how societies can mistreat
others. Perhaps, this was not surprising, as Shelley was the
daughter of the feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft.
Wollstonecraft was a critic of the way women were treated in
society, most famously noting this in her work The
Vindication of Women’s Rights. Both Shelley and Austen
spoke out against prejudice, and the patriarchal nature of
society.

7.  The Georgians shaped the nature of the social class system,
and this remains in modern Britain. The upper class was a
small segment of society and included the wealthiest. It was
an elite aristocracy that was closed off to all others. The upper
class was not infrequently subject to criminal acts in Georgian
England though, as there was not a police force in the modern
form. Secondly, there was the middle class. This class was a
little broader than the upper class, but it still retained a small
percentage of society. It was made up of various businessmen
and professionals. And, last but not least, there was the
working class. The working class made up the majority of the
Georgian era’s population. It was a class that was exploited by
the rich and it was often forced to work in the newly formed
factories. Children, from as young as five, were even made to
work.

8.  The Georgian era attained an eloquent fashion, style,
music, and literature, and is seen as a time that
shaped the modern era that we live in today. It
shaped the foundations of modern Britain, giving the
country an industrial and agricultural revolution,
along with a class structure that still exists in modern
Britain. The Georgians also gave us some of our
finest literature. Simply put, the Georgians gave us
modernism.

9. Authors During the Georgian Era
 Daniel Defoe was very popular. Many of his works were
hits among his readers. Some of them were Moll
Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year, and
Roxanne.
 Sir Walter Scott changed the way history was viewed.
One of his favourite topics was Scotland. He rewrote
historical fiction in such a way that it did not seem like
Gothic Fiction but held some information regarding the
past but also had fictional content.
 A famous name during this era is Jane Austen. spoken in
parallel with Pope, even though she was present during
Scott’s time.

10. Georgian Era Novels
 Austen expressed societal stigmas in her novels in
the form of satire and humour with hard-hitting
messages. Some of her novels are Pride and
Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Sense and
Sensibility, and Emma.
 Thomas Peacock was a writer during this time but
was not very well known. Some of his important
work was Nightmare Abbey, Headlong Hall,
Crotchet Castle.

11.  Maria Edgeworth was an Irish writer who served as
an inspiration for Walter Scott. Her most famous
novel was Castle Rackrent.
 Other writers include Charles Lamb who wrote more
essays than novels. He is known for Essays of Elia
and Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. Leigh
Hunt was another writer during Lamb’s time who
was proficient in writing essays.

12.  Satire became very popular among readers during
the Georgian Era. Other authors were William
Hazlitt, Laurence Stern, Samuel Richardson, who
wrote Clarissa, and Thomas de Quincey.

13. Georgian poetry
 a variety of lyrical poetry produced in the early 20th
century by an assortment of British poets, including
Lascelles Abercrombie, Hilaire Belloc, Edmund
Charles Blunden, Rupert Brooke, William Henry
Davies, Ralph Hodgson, John Drinkwater, James
Elroy Flecker, Wilfred Wilson Gibson, Robert
Graves, Walter de la Mare, Harold Monro (editor of
The Poetry Review), Siegfried Sassoon, Sir J.C.
Squire, and Edward Thomas.

14.  Brooke and Sir Edward Marsh, wishing to make new
poetry accessible to a wider public, with Monro,
Drinkwater, and Gibson, planned a series of
anthologies. To this series they applied the name
“Georgian” to suggest the opening of a new poetic
age with the accession in 1910 of George V. Five
volumes of Georgian Poetry, edited by Marsh, were
published between 1912 and 1922.

15.  The real gifts of Brooke, Davies, de la Mare, Blunden,
and Hodgson should not be overlooked, but, taken as
a whole, much of the Georgians’ work was lifeless. It
took inspiration from the countryside and nature,
and in the hands of less gifted poets, the resulting
poetry was diluted and middlebrow conventional
verse of late Romantic character. “Georgian” came to
be a pejorative (insulting) term, used in a sense not
intended by its ancestors: rooted in its period and
looking backward rather than forward.

16. Features of Georgian Poetry
 Georgian poetry is the poetry of the early decades of 20th century
when king George ruled England. It is an easily simple poetry,
largely in the romantic vein, having certain marked characters like
of its own. Says A.S. Collins, “The Georgians had, of course,
Appositive aim, it was too treat natural thing in a clear, natural and
beautiful way, neither too modern not too much like Tennyson. In
their treatment of nature and social life they discarded the use of
aspheric diction such as ‘theca’ and ‘thou’ and eschewed snack
poetical constructions as ‘winter’ drear and ‘host on armed host’.
They dropped all gorgeous and grandiloquent expressions in
thought and expression. In reaction to Victorian didacticism their
verse avoided “all formally religious, philosophic or in proving
themes”, and in reaction to the decadent or Aesthetics of the
nineties, they avoided all subjects that smacked of sadness,
weakness and café-table.”

17.  The Georgian poets are neither impressionistic nor existential
but “as simple as a child’s reading book”. Their themes are
“nature, love, leisure, old age, childhood, animals, sleep, bulls
and other domestic or wild animals. It is poetry for the many
and not for the scholarly few alone. It can be enjoyed even by
the learned. Georgian poetry has been subjected to severe
criticism by critics like T.S. Eliot. It has been said that the
Georgian poetry is meant for nice people and that they were
too inclined to indulge in mutual praise and that it is a poetry
lacking in depth and originality, and so unfit for the
thoughtful readers in the modern complex age. John
Masefield, Walter De La Mare, W.H. Dories Drinkwater etc..
are some of the leading poets of the Georgian era.

18. Drama
 Initially, the population of London was just around
five million people which rose to nine million people
in a span of 100 years. Many people migrated to
nearby towns and cities in search of better
opportunities. This led to the young generation to
seek for more entertainment and which was provided
to them by theatres and all those were part of it.

19. Georgian Audiences
 Both rich and poor class people were there to enjoy
the plays. The price of the ticket was varying which
were a mixture of both cheap and expensive tickets.
The wealthy aristocracy used to sit in boxes and the
poor class people were made to sit at the top of
galleries which were dirty and very hot. People use to
consume food and alcohol in a large amount. They
also kept with the rotten fruits and vegetables to be
thrown at performance if they didn’t like it.

20. Georgian Era Leading Playwrights
 Richard Steele/ The supervisor of Drury Lane
Theatre/ The Conscious Lovers
 Nicholas Rowe/ Tamerlaine
 John Gay/ The Beggar’s Opera

21. Thank you