Literary History

Many developments in the nineteenth century led to the rapid rise of the novel’s popularity. In England, literacy increased due to a growing middle class, and more and more libraries opened by the mid-1800s. Literary magazines emerged, giving novelists a more inexpensive way to publish their novels. These literary magazines published novels in serial format or in separate installments in subsequent issues.

The most popular serial novelists of the nineteenth century included Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, William Thackeray, and Thomas Hardy. Some of these authors completed their novels before publishing them in the serial format. However, other authors incorporated readers’ feedback as each part in the serial was published.

The novel was truly a new literary form. Without traditions from which to draw, writers experimented with genres within this form. Comic, sporting, romance, Gothic, social-problem, and Regionalist novels all were born during this time.

Dickens’s Hard Times and Oliver Twist are social-problem novels, or novels that deal with problems such as poverty and corruption. Another social-problem novel, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, exposes the brutal circumstances the working class faced in Victorian England. This expression of Realism reflected a departure from Romanticism. The Industrial Revolution brought many innovations to society; however, it also brought greediness and adverse working conditions. Many social reforms erupted by the late 1800s.

Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Brontë, and Emily Brontë wrote Regionalist novels. Like their American counterparts such as Mark Twain, these writers utilized dialect, physical landmarks, and stereotypes of local characters to depict a particular place, usually a rural setting. Sisters Charlotte and Emily Brontë drew upon the gloomy Yorkshire moors where they were raised for the settings for their novels Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, respectively.

The popularity of the serial novel did not survive the nineteenth century. However, it proved that the public was willing to embrace this type of literature, and novels remain an extremely popular literary form today.

Bibliography

Oliver Twist. New York: Dover Publications, 2002. Charles Dickens’s tale of a young innocent, Oliver Twist, who lives in absolute poverty in Victorian London.

Mary Barton. New York: Oxford University Press USA, 1998. Elizabeth Gaskell’s view of life in nineteenth-century England through the eyes of the young, beautiful Mary Barton.

Wuthering Heights. New York: Bantam Classics, 1983. Emily Brontë’s only novel is about the classic love affair between Heathcliff and Catherine, set on the bleak Yorkshire moors.

Jane Eyre. New York: Dover Publications, 2003. The unabridged version of Charlotte Brontë’s classic story of an orphaned girl who makes her way through life, from boarding school to a career as a governess.

The Mill on the Floss. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. George Eliot’s novel about Maggie Tulliver, whose spirited temperament puts her in conflict with her family and community.

Web Links

The Dickens Project
http://humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens/about.html
A consortium devoted to the study of the life and works of English novelist Charles Dickens. This scholarly Web site is both interesting and entertaining.

An Outline of the English Novel: The Short List
http://www.accd.edu/SAC/ENGLIsh/bailey/engnovel.htm
This is a list of the major English novelists of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, with links to a biography and bibliography for each.

The Victorian Web
http://www.victorianweb.org
An overview of the political, social, and cultural history of the Victorian era. Follow the “Authors” link to biographies, timelines, and more information on Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, and many others.

The 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html
Here is the list of the top one hundred novels of the twentieth century, selected by The Modern Library Board. A readers’ list appears alongside the Board’s. James Joyce’s Ulysses tops the Board’s list; Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged topped the readers’ list.