How Literature was Affected in the Victorian Age

The Year 1837 was very significant. It was not only the year that Queen Victoria acceded the throne, but also the year that a new literary age was coined. The Victorian Age, more formally known, was a time of great prosperity in Great Britain's literature(Keach 608). The Victorian Age produced a variety of changes. Political and social reform produced a variety of reading among all classes(Stuart 5). The lower-class became more self-conscious, the middle class more powerful and the rich became more vulnerable(6). The novels of Charles Dickens, the poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning, the dramatic plays of Oscar Wilde, the scientific discoveries of the Darwins, and the religious revolt of Newman all helped to enhance learning and literacy in the Victorian society. Of all of the Literary eras, the Victorian age gave a new meaning to the word controversy. Writers of that time challenged the ideas of religion, crime, sexuality, chauvinism and over all social controversies(Brown 16).

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, by George Fre...

Carbon print of Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1869, printe...

English: Alfred Tennyson, British poet

Queen Victoria influenced the literary age herself. She loved to read and she was educated in the finest schools in Great Britain(Fraiser 278). Queen Victoria encouraged reading among all of her people. She gave out free books to children and she built schools for the lower classes. Also the Queen invited prominent Victorian age writers such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Charles Dickens to read privately to her in Buckingham Palace(Packard 59).

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The Victorian Age was also an era of several unsettling social developments. This forced writers to take positions on immediate issues animating the rest of society(Brown 23). Hence, romantic forms of expression in poetry and prose continued to dominate English literature throughout much of the century. The attention of many writers was directed to the growth of the English democracy, education, materiallism, religion, science...