This presentation contains the history of Victorian Age, major poets and major novelists and their works during the reign of Queen Victoria, like Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde.

1. Victorian
Age
(1832-1901)

2. Victorian Age
 Period of Queen Victoria’s reign
from 20 June 1837 until her death
on 22 January 1901
 It was a long period of peace,
prosperity, refined sensibilities
and national self-confidence for
Britain

3.  She had the
longest reign in
British history
 Became
queen at the
age of 18
 She also had a
gift for drawing
and painting

4.  She maintained a sense
of dignity and decorum
that restored the
average person’s high
opinion of the
monarchy after a series
of horrible, ineffective
leaders
 1840 -Victoria married a
German prince, Albert,
who became not king,
but Prince -consort
 After he died in 1861,
she sank into a deep
depression and wore
black every day for the
rest of her life

5.  During the Victorian Age, great
economic, social, and political
changes.
 The empire reached its height and
covered about a fourth of world’s
land.
 Industry and trade expanded
rapidly.
 Science and technology made
advances.

6. ☼ By 1850’s, a lot of people were
getting an education.
☼ The government introduced
democratic reforms.
☼ In spite of prosperity, factory and
farm workers lived in terrible poverty.
☼ Benjamin Disraeli – described
England as two nation, one rich and
one poor.

7. During the second half of
the 1800’s, new scientific theories
seemed to challenge many
religious beliefs. The most
controversial theory appeared in
The Origin of Species (1859) by the
biologist Charles Darwin.

9. Poetry

10. Victorian Poetry
The Victorian Age produced a
large and diverse body of poetry. The
Romantic style predominated at first,
but realism and naturalism force as
time went on.

11. Alfred, Lord
Tennyson (1809-
1892)
- He is the most
popular poet of
the era, he’s a
romantic poet.
- Influenced by
earlier romantic
poets, especially
Walter Scott.

12. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- he wrote many long narrative poems
on ancient and medieval themes like
the King Arthur legend.
- his verse displays a keen sense of the
music language, and some of his
more sentimental lyrics reappeared in
popular songs.

13. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Works:
- Ulysses (1842)
- In Memoriam (1850)
- The Lady of Shalott
- Tears, Idle Tears
- The Splendors Falls
- The Lotos-Eaters
- Crossing the Bar

14. "Ulysses" An oft-quoted
poem, it is popularly
used to illustrate the
dramatic monologue
form. Facing old age,
mythical hero Ulysses
describes his discontent
and restlessness upon
returning to his kingdom,
Ithaca, after his far-
ranging travels. Despite
his reunion with his wife
Penelope and son
Telemachus, Ulysses
yearns to explore again.

15. - is a poem completed
in 1849. It is a requiem
for the poet's beloved
Cambridge friend
Arthur Henry Hallam. It
contains some of
Tennyson's most
accomplished lyrical
work, and is an
unusually sustained
exercise in lyric verse. It
is widely considered to
be one of the great
poems of the 19th
century.

16. I
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro' time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,
Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
`Behold the man that loved and lost,
But all he was is overworn.'

17. VII
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more—
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.

18. LXXXII
I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth's embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter'd stalks,
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.

19. CXXX
Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But tho' I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:
My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho' I die.

20. Robert Browning
(1812-1889)
- He produced a
body of poetry as
diverse as
Tennyson’s, although
in his lifetime he
never achieved
equal public
acclaim. Many of his
poems display
Romantic attitudes.

21. Works:
- My Last Duchess
- Home Thoughts, from Abroad
- Love Among the Ruins
- Prospice
- Dramatis Personae (1864)
- The Ring and the Book (1868)

22. My Last Duchess
(1842)
The speaker, presumably the Duke of Ferrara, is
giving the emissary of the family of his
prospective new wife, presumably a third or
fourth since Browning could have easily written
'second' but did not do so, a tour of the artworks
in his home. He draws a curtain to reveal a
painting of a woman, explaining that it is a
portrait of his late wife; he invites his guest to sit
and look at the painting. As they look at the
portrait of the late Duchess, the Duke describes
her happy, cheerful and flirtatious nature, which
had displeased him. He says, "She had a heart –
how shall I say? – too soon made glad..." He
goes on to say that his complaint of her was
that "'twas not her husband's presence only"
that made her happy. Eventually, "I gave
commands; then all smiles stopped together."
He now keeps her painting hidden behind a
curtain that only he is allowed to draw back,
meaning that now she only smiles for him. The
Duke then resumes an earlier conversation
regarding wedding arrangements, and in
passing points out another work of art, a bronze
statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse.
In an interview, Browning said, "I meant that the
commands were that she should be put to
death . . . Or he might have had her shut up in a
convent."

23. OH, to be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the
brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in
tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the
orchard bough
In England—now!
And after April, when May
follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and
all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed
pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters
on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the
bent spray's edge—
That 's the wise thrush; he sings
each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never
could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look
rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide
wakes anew
The buttercups, the little
children's dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy
melon-flower!

24. Matthew Arnold
(1822-1888)
- He strikes as a
twentieth century
readers as the most
modern.
- The persistent theme
of his poems– people’s
isolation and
alienation from nature
and from one
another– ha been
echoed by many
writers and thinkers of
our own age.

25. Works:
- To Marguerite– Continued
- Self-Dependence
- Dover Beach

26. To Marguerite: Continued
YES! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour —
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain —
Oh might our marges meet again!
Who order’d, that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
A God, a God their severance rul’d!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.

27. Thomas Hardy
(1820-1928)
- Sometimes called “the
last of the great
Victorian.”
- Like Matthew Arnold,
he held a pessimistic
view of the world.
- Unlike Arnold,
however, who sought
to improve society,
Hardy remained a
passive observer of the
ills of his century.

28. Works:
- The Darling Thrush
- The Man He Killed
- Ah, Are you Digging on my Grave?
- Jude the Obscure (1895)

29. "Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
"I shot him dead because —
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although
"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
No other reason why.
"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."

30. Elizabeth Barrett-
Browning (1806-
1861)
- One of the best-known
woman poets of her
own or any time.
- She received no
formal education.
- She began writing
poetry as a child and,
by the time she
reached adulthood,
had published four
immensely popular
volumes of verse

31. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

33. Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
☼ his novels are noted for their
colorful, and sometimes eccentric,
characters.
Works:
Oliver’s Twist (1837-1839)
David Copperfield (1849-1850)
Bleak House (1852-1853)
Tale of Two Cities
A Christmas Carol

34. Oliver Twist (1837-
1870)
The story is about the
orphan Oliver Twist, who
starts his life in a
workhouse and is then
apprenticed with an
undertaker. He escapes
from there and travels to
London where he meets
the Artful Dodger, a
member of a gang of
juvenile pickpockets,
which is led by the
elderly criminal Fagin.

35. A Christmas Carol
(1843)
- tells the story of a bitter
old miser
named Ebenezer
Scrooge and his
transformation into a
gentler, kindlier man
after visitations by the
ghost of his former
business partner Jacob
Marley and the Ghosts of
Christmases Past, Present
and Yet to Come.

36. Emily Bronte
(1818-1848)
was an English novelist
and poet who is best
known for her only
novel, Wuthering
Heights, now considered
a classic of English
literature. Emily was the
third eldest of the four
surviving Brontë siblings,
between the
youngest Anne and her
brother Branwell. She
wrote under the pen
name Ellis Bell.

37. Wuthering
Heights (1845-
1846)
Wuthering Heights is the
name of the Yorkshire
farmhouse where the
story unfolds. The book's
core theme is the
destructive effect of
jealousy and
vengefulness both on
the jealous or vengeful
individuals and on their
communities.

38. Oscar Wilde
(1854-1900)
- Oscar Fingal
O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
- He was born in Dublin,
Ireland, the son of a
famous surgeon and a
Dublin poet.
- Wilde’s full name was
as extravagant as he
was.

39. The Nightingale
and The Rose
It is the tale of a lovestruck
student who must provide his
lover with a red rose in order to
win her heart. A nightingale
overhearing his lament from a
solitary oak tree is filled with
sorrow and admiration all at
once, and decides to help the
poor young man.
She journeys through the night
seeking the perfect red rose
and finally comes across a
rambling rose bush but alas,
the bush has no roses to offer
her. However, there is a way to
MAKE a red rose, but with
grave consequences.

40. English Voices
Quotations by Prominent Figures of the
Period
“Man is a tool-making animal.”
- Thomas Carlyle, Sartor
Resartus
“Youth is a blunder; manhood a
struggle; old age a regret.”
- Elizabeth Barret-Browning, Sonnets
from the Portuguese

41. “The only purpose for which power
can be rightfully exercised over any
member of a civilized community,
against his will, is to prevent harm to
others.”
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
“You cannot fight against the future.
Time is on our side.”
- William E. Gladstone, Speech on the
Second Reform Bill

42. “It’s them as take advantage
that get advantage I’
this world.”
- George Eliot, Adam Bede
“’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam,
A.H.H.

43. “A man’s reach should exceed his
grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?”
- Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto
“He had used the word in its
Pickwickian sense.”
- Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

45. References:
• Various internet sources
• English literature book (forgot the title)