the victorian era essay

Victorian Era Essay

The Victorian Age (or Victorian Era) is the time period in British history that spanned from 1837 to 1901. It is named after Queen Victoria, who ruled during this time. The Victorian Age was a time of great change and progress, as well as conflict and upheaval.

Some of the most important developments during the Victorian Age include the Industrial Revolution, which saw major advances in technology and manufacturing; the expansion of democratic rights, including voting for women; and a dramatic rise in living standards, thanks to improvements in healthcare and sanitation.

However, not everything about the Victorian Age was positive. There was also a great deal of social inequality and poverty, as well as growing discontent among the working classes. The Victorians were also faced with a number of major crises, including the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, and the Boer War.

Despite these challenges, the Victorian Age is often remembered as a time of great achievement and progress. Queen Victoria herself was a popular and influential monarch, and her long reign helped to define British culture and society for decades to come.

The Victorian Period or Victorian Era refers to the time period between Queen Victoria’s reign in England from 1837 to 1901. The people and things of this era would be prudish, straight-laced, and old-fashioned. Another aspect of the Victorian age was that many members of the upper class were snooty and looked down on others, especially the lower class people. Furthermore, this period preceded the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the 1920s.

So, Victorian women didnt have many rights and werent able to vote until much later. In terms of fashion, the Victorians favored very elaborate and detailed designs in their clothing. This was especially true for women who often wore multiple petticoats, hoopskirts, and bustles. Men also dressed quite extravagantly with top hats and tails being among the most popular styles. One thing that both men and women shared was a love for large, heavy jewelry.

Despite all of its quirks, the Victorian Age was a time of great progress and technological advancements. The Industrial Revolution took place during this era, which led to huge improvements in manufacturing and transportation. Many new inventions were created during the Victorian Age as well, including the first passenger railway and the first electric light bulb. All in all, the Victorian Age was a time of great change and development.

From 1884 to 1900, Ruskin focused his attention on mid-Victorianism, defining it as the time from 1851 to 1879 when art and literature flourished in rapid succession. He identified early Victorianism – a socially and politically turbulent span between 1837 and 1850 – with late Victorianism (from 1880 onwards), which was followed by new waves of aestheticism and imperialism. From the Victorian era’s heyday: mid-Victorianism, 1851 to 1879.

The Victorian Age, also called the Victorian Era, is the time period in British history that corresponds with the rule of Queen Victoria. It began in 1837 when she became queen and ended in 1901 when she died. The Victorian Age was a time of great change, both socially and politically. There were also many advances made in technology and industry.

One of the most significant events during the Victorian Age was the Industrial Revolution. This was a time when Britain saw an enormous increase in industrial production. Factories were built and new technologies were developed. The population of Britain also grew rapidly during this time.

The Victorian Age was also a time of great expansion for the British Empire. Many new colonies were acquired and Britain became one of the most powerful nations in the world. Queen Victoria was a strong supporter of the British Empire and she did a great deal to expand it.

The Victorian Age was a time of great social change as well. There were many new movements and ideas that emerged during this time. One of the most important was the movement for women’s rights. Women began to demand that they be given the same rights as men. They also campaigned for better education and opportunities for employment.

The Victorian Age was also a time of great artistic and literary achievement. Many famous writers and artists flourished during this time. Some of the most famous include Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and William Blake.

The Victorian Era saw the debut of several literary genres, including the novel. Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Oscar Wilde are some Victorian writers who emerged during this period. Writers in the Victorian era were constantly reacting to their surroundings. Queen Victoria had an enormous impact on her world, as did she on literature that addressed the issues facing Victorians. The comedy play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is set in late-Victorian England.

Dickens is known for his novels that take place in the Victorian Era. His novels, such as Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities, show the harsh realities that people had to live in during the time period. These novels often showed the good and bad aspects of society and allowed people to see what life was like during the Victorian Age. Eliot’s work is also often set in this time period. Her novel, Middlemarch, takes place in a fictional town in England and shows the different levels of society present during the Victorian Era. Gaskell’s novels are also often set during this time period and focus on similar issues as Dickens and Eliot.

The Victorian Era was a time of great change. Queen Victoria was a strong ruler who helped to shape the era. The Victorian Era is often seen as a time of progress, where many new things emerged. This was also a time of great inequality, where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. However, it was also a time of great innovation and saw the emergence of many new ideas and technologies. The Victorian Era was a time of great transformation and left a lasting impact on the world.

The Victorian Age or Victorian Era was a time of great progress, where many new things emerged. This was also a time of great inequality, where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. However, it was also a time of great innovation and saw the emergence of many new ideas and technologies. The Victorian Era left a lasting impact on society that can still be seen today in different aspects such as politics (women’s rights), technology (Industrial Revolution) and art/literature (Charles Dickens).

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Victorian Era Timeline

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 11, 2023 | Original: March 15, 2019

The Victorian Era was a time of vast political reform and social change, the Industrial Revolution , authors Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin , a railway and shipping boom, profound scientific discovery and the first telephone and telegraph. But the Victorian Era—the 63-year period from 1837-1901 that marked the reign of Queen Victoria —also saw a demise of rural life as cities and slums rapidly grew, long and regimented factory hours for many laborers, the bloody Jack the Ripper and even bloodier Crimean War .

Queen Victoria, who was born in 1819 and ascended the throne at age 18, was Britain’s second-longest reigning monarch (surpassed only by Queen Elizabeth II ). Her rule during one of Britain’s greatest eras saw the country create the world’s biggest empire, with one-fourth of the global population owing allegiance to the queen.

Here’s a timeline of innovations and events that helped define the Victorian Era.

May 24, 1819 : Alexandrina Victoria is born in Kensington Palace . As a royal princess, she is recognized as a potential heir to the throne of Great Britain.

Aug. 1, 1834 : The British empire abolishes slavery , and more than 800,000 formerly enslaved people in the British Caribbean are eventually set free. The government provides compensation to slave owners, but nothing to formerly enslaved people.

June 20, 1837 : Queen Victoria takes the crown at the age of 18. The granddaughter of King George III , her father died when she was just 8 months old, and her three uncles also died, putting her first in line as heir to the throne. An estimated 400,000 people thronged the streets of London for her coronation in Westminster Abbey .

July 25, 1837 : The first electric telegraph is sent between English inventor William Fothergill Cooke and scientist Charles Wheatstone, who went on to found The Electric Telegraph Company.

May 8, 1838 : The People’s Charter , the result of the Chartism protest movement, calls for a more democratic system including six points: the right to vote for men age 21 and older; no property qualification to run for Parliament ; annual elections; equal representation; payment for members of Parliament; and vote by secret ballot.

Sept. 17, 1838 : The first modern railroad line, the London-Birmingham Railway , opens, starting the steam-powered railway boom and revolutionizing travel.

Feb. 10, 1840 : Queen Victoria marries German Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, her first cousin. As queen, she was the one to propose. During their 21 years of marriage (until Albert died of typhoid in 1861) the couple had nine children. They also introduced many typically German Christmas traditions to Britain, such as decorated Christmas trees .

May 1, 1840 : The Penny Black, the world’s first postage stamp sold for one penny, is released in Britain, featuring a profile portrait of Queen Victoria. More than 70 million letters are sent within the next year, a number that tripled in two years. It’s soon copied in other countries, and the stamp is used for 40 years.

Dec. 19, 1843 : Charles Dickens, one of the era’s greatest writers, publishes A Christmas Carol . Other works from the author during this period—many featuring protests against class and economic inequality—include Oliver Twist , Great Expectations , David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby .

September 1845 : Ireland’s potato crop begins to fail from a widespread mold infestation, causing the Irish Potato Famine , also known as the Great Hunger, that leads to 1 million deaths and caused 1 to 2 million people to emigrate from the country, landing in various cities throughout North America and Great Britain.

May 1, 1851 : The brainchild of Prince Albert, the Great Exhibition opens in London’s Crystal Palace, with 10,000-plus exhibitors displaying the world’s technological wonders—from false teeth to farm machinery to telescopes. Six million visitors attend what would become the first world’s fair before it closes in October.

April 7, 1853 : Queen Victoria uses chloroform as an anesthetic during the delivery of her eighth child, Leopold. Though controversial at the time, Victoria’s embrace of anesthesia quickly popularized the medical advancement.

Dec. 24, 1853 : The Vaccination Act makes it mandatory for children born after Aug. 1, 1853, to be vaccinated against smallpox . Parents failing to comply are fined or imprisoned.

March 28, 1854 : France and Britain declare war on Russia, launching the Crimean War, which largely surrounds the protection of the rights of minority Christians in the Ottoman Empire. History’s most famous nurse, Florence Nightingale , helps reduce the death count by two-thirds by improving unsanitary conditions. An estimated 367,000 soldiers died in the two-year conflict.

Nov. 24, 1859 : The controversial On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin is published, presenting his theory of natural selection and challenging the theory of creation.

January 9, 1863 : The world’s first underground railway, the London Underground, opens. About 9.5 million people would ride the steam trains during their first year of operation.

Dec. 9, 1868 : Liberal William Gladstone defeats Conservative Benjamin Disraeli to become prime minister, a position he held for four non-consecutive terms. His legacy includes reform for Ireland, establishing an elementary education program and instituting secret ballot voting.

March 7, 1876 : Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell is awarded a patent on his invention of the telephone, and, three days later, famously makes the first phone call to Thomas Watson, his assistant.

May 1, 1876 : Under the direction of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, India , which has been under British rule since 1858, declares Queen Victoria Empress of India.

August 2, 1880 : The Elementary Education Act of 1880 makes school attendance mandatory for children from ages five to 10, effectively reducing the hours children can be forced to spend working in fields, mills, mines and factories.

Aug.-Nov. 1888 : An unknown killer named Jack the Ripper murders and mutilates five prostitutes in London, striking terror into the heart of the city.

May 26, 1897: The Irish novelist Bram Stoker publishes Dracula , the story of a now-legendary vampire of aristocratic bearing, inspired in part by his visit to ghostly ruins in the seaside Yorkshire town of Whitby.

Jan. 22, 1901 : Queen Victoria dies on the Isle of Wight at age 81, ending the Victorian Era. She is succeeded by Edward VII, her eldest son, who reigned until his death in 1910. At the time of her death, the British Empire extended over roughly one-fifth of the earth’s land surface, giving rise to the claim, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”

India from Queen Victoria’s time to independence. The History Press . Past Prime Ministers: William Ewart Gladstone. Gov.uk . Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconsfield. Gov.uk . An Introduction to Victorian England (1837-1901). English Heritage . What happened during the Victorian era? Royal Museums Greenwich . Queen Victoria uses chloroform in childbirth, 1853. Financial Times .

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British History: The Victorian England Essay

Introduction, works cited.

The term ‘Victorian’ was named after the reign of Queen Victoria who ruled England during the year1837 to 1901. It has been marked in history as an age that was preceded by the Georgian period and succeeded by the Edwardian period. This era is generally regarded as one among the outstanding ages of the United Kingdom that had embossed its marks in various fields, such as with the improvement of industries, the development of the middle class, art, literature, etc. It was also noted for the religious inconsistencies, affected with the advent of many scientific theories like the ‘On the Theory of Species’ by Charles Darwin and the great invention of Cowper Nikes that proved the rotundity of the earth.

History has been characterized this age as a long period of peace, followed by the Crimean War, fought between Russia and the European alliance during the year 1853 to1856 that ended with the fall of the Ottoman Empire in Russia. The term ‘Victorian’ has been achieved a wide range of connotations, with a firm set of moral standards, having Hippocratic application. Victorian age is noted on Victorian’s attitude to sexual decency which was far from reality. Victorians liked to follow conscious blindness in their sexual interactions. One can understand that Victorian morality was wrapped with the aristocracy. It has been observed that even as the Victorians pretend to be better than they exist, others to be much worse than they are. In the pages of world history, England traveled the world of aristocracy and religious perverseness. One can easily find the Victorian age was characterized by explosive changes and developments. Several events affected the social, political, and religious life of the Victorian people. In every field of social life, Victorians made surprising findings and changes. People in Victorian England are the real parents of modern England.

A very notable change of the Victorian people was their belief in the religious faith; it was the time of great religious anarchism. The invention of Darwin’s evolutionary theory became a sudden shock for Victorian faith and optimism. The Victorians experienced a great age of doubt and spiritual hollowness. It was a great age doubt and this doubtful mentality is also has been expressed in the literature of that time. The writers of that time tried to unite Romantic emphasis upon self, emotion, the neoclassical concept of imagination and were eloquent about the responsibility of the artist to the art and the public. It was a period of innovations and surprising changes. These changes would be easily noticeable regarding ideology, politics, and society. It has also been paved the way for many movements like democracy, feminism, socialism, Marxism, etc. the great scholars of the Victorian era-Darwin, Marx and Freud so on had attempted to find the proper solution for the modern problems.

Comparing Victorian age one can see the glimpses of imperialism in economics, politics, culture, and social life. Victorian culture and lifestyle became the striking model of the 19th-century world. Victorian England was never ready to come out of its Hippocratic aristocracy while the arrival of the industrial revolution influences every aspect of the social and the political life of Britain. Victorians were skeptical about the religion but in the 19th century the Christianity regained its lost prestige and the Anglican Church became the main church of that time. Catholicism and Protestantism also had regained their power and fixed their dominance in various parts of England.

Many events had occurred in the Victorian era and these events have been brought tremendous changes in the future life of the British Empire. It was at the time of Queen Victoria (1842) that the law to prohibit women and children was approved. It was also the time of the cholera epidemic that caused the lives of more than 2000 people in1848. Another great event of this age was the Great Exhibition held in 1851, in The Crystal Palace that acquired great success and great mass attention. The most important thing which had a tremendous influence on the social, as well as the religious life of the British people, was the publication of the most controversial book ‘The Origin of Species ‘by Charles Darwin in 1859. The book led to great religious doubt and insecurity among the people and they even questioned the principles of Christianity. The death of Prince Albert in 1861 had a deep impact on Queen Victoria and led her from keeping away from the public for many years and she wore a widow’s bonnet instead of the crown. The mutilation of five or more prostitutes by the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper caused worldwide press coverage and it led to the attack of the public against the police and politicians of that time. It had also led to the resignation of Sir Charles Warrens and a great focus on the suffering of unemployment. The age is particularly known for the free education given to the children in1891.

England’s war with the revolutionary and Napoleonic France had a remarkable effect on English Social and cultural life. The war broke out in 1803 with Russia, Sweden, Australia, and England-called the ‘third coalition’ on one side – with France on the other. France under Napoleon defeated Russia in 1805 and Prussia in 1806. After this successful invasion against Russia, he turned against Great Britain but was defeated in 1805 at Trafalgar.

Changes could be visible towards the concluding part of the Victorian era in the social and cultural life of Britain. Class divisions were common in those days but its allegations remained unrealized. The epidemics and the luxurious life of the Victorians had pressed them very badly and it caused economic inequality. The words of Roberts make it clear when he rightly comments about the close of the century that “In our community, as in every other of its kind, each street had the usual social rating; one side of one end of that street might be classed higher than another…Class divisions were of the greatest consequence though their implications remained unrealized: the many looked upon social and economic inequality as the law of nature…On the whole…most families were well aware of their position within the community, and that without any explicit analyses.” (Roberts). People were divided socially, culturally, and economically. The social life was, to an extent, peaceful excluding the war with France. The political state of Britain was worse with the inefficiency of the politicians and the police who could not assure the safety of the public. They have been severely criticized and often attacked by the public. The great classification existed at the economic level but the people were aware of their status and position in the society. Though there had existed these shortcomings in the Victorian era, one can see that the age has been deeply influenced by present-day England and even now they follow some of the principles and theories followed by the Victorians. So one can undoubtedly remark that the Victorian era was one of the outstanding ages of the history of England.

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Bibliography

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Home › Literature › Victorian Poetry

Victorian Poetry

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on February 16, 2021 • ( 0 )

“Victorian poetry” is a term that does not quite coincide with the reign of Queen Victoria—a reign that began with the death of her uncle, William IV, in 1837 and lasted until her own death some 63 years later on January 22, 1901. The great poets who wrote most or all of their work while she was queen (and later, starting in 1876, empress of India) include Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and A. E. Housman. Some of the poets we think of as major 20th-century figures began writing in the Victorian Age, most significantly, perhaps, William Butler Yeats, but also Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling. The measure and historical importance of the Victorian period in literary history can be marked by the fact that William Wordsworth, who had seen the French Revolution, was still writing a decade after Victoria became queen, while Yeats (who would live until the eve of the Second World War) had already published some of his most important books before she died.

Mention of Yeats and Kipling in the same sentence suggests a different way of defining the Victorian era: Kipling feels Victorian in a way that Yeats does not, and this is because Kipling’s great poetry accepted as a fact of history Britain’s Victorian-style preeminence in the world, whereas Yeats joined with the moderns to see how all that was solid melted into the air—in particular the air of World War I (1914–18), which changed everything. As a cultural phenomenon, the Victorian era might be said to have come to an end in August 1914. Indeed, at the end of the era thus defined, some of the most significant late Victorian writers, such as Alice Meynell, began leading pacifist movements against the resurgent militarism and international violence that so characterized Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

Violence on the mechanized and global scale of the 20th century was one of the results of the seismic scientific and technological shifts that gave rise to the Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century and spread throughout Europe and North America. If we put the end of the Victorian era at the beginning of World War I, we can say that it begins a little before Victoria’s accession, with the sudden and earthshaking discoveries of Victorian science. Tennyson and Browning, the two greatest Victorian poets, both took an intense interest in the revolutionary scientific discoveries of the day. The central and most revolutionary achievement of Victorian science was Charles Darwin’s (1809–82) discovery of the mechanism of evolution, the “Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life,” as the title page of the first edition of his book puts it. That book, generally known as On the Origin of the Species, appeared in 1859, the same year as Edward FitzGerald’s despairing celebration of the nothingness of human life in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, written partly in answer to Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. The first edition of In Memoriam had been completed 10 years earlier, so Darwin was not a shadow in Tennyson’s early world. But his gigantic shadow was, in fact, first cast by the discoveries and systematic exposition of Charles Lyell (1797–1875) in his Principles of Geology , published in three volumes between 1830 and 1833—the year that Arthur Henry Hallam (A.H.H.), Tennyson’s closest and most beloved friend, died at 22 of a cerebral hemorrhage. Lyell was one of the first to have an inkling of what has come to be called “deep time,” the shocking, almost infinite antiquity of the world—an antiquity that suggested an equally shocking future stretching uniformly ahead forever. Since it was really only in the 18th century that astronomers began to be aware of the vastness of space (no one knew that other stars were also suns until then), the scientific revolution that began with the Enlightenment and accelerated throughout the Victorian era was one that severely undercut human belief in transcendentalist idealism. The universe suddenly appeared too big to transcend, and as Tennyson put it, the muse of astronomy, Urania, rebuked the muse of elegy and tragedy, Melpomene, who replied, “A touch of shame upon her cheek; / ‘I am not worthy ev’n to speak / Of thy prevailing mysteries’” ( f , section 37, ll. 10–12).

For Tennyson, the death of Hallam was a catastrophic experience of the overwhelming of the human soul by an indifferent universe. Romantic poetry (see romanticism) had found a way to idealize human subjectivity as against the trash of mere empirical externality, but the cascading discoveries of science represented a kind of revenge on the part of the material world. In theory—romantic theory—the mind could transcend any world, no matter how great, because the world’s greatness was only relative, and the mind traffics with absolutes (see, for example, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Mont Blanc ). But for the Victorians, the discovery of unimagined abysses showed that the world far outvied the mind when it came to imagination—nature’s indifferent, inhuman imagination (personified in In Memoriam ) made little of anything the human mind could offer from its own petty resources. In Memoriam and many other great Victorian poems struggled against this apprehension, but the struggle shows few of the transcendent and absolute victories to be found in the greatest romantic poets. (Browning’s essay on Shelley explicitly contrasts the objectivity of contemporary poetry—an objectivity he also ascribes to William Shakespeare—to romantic subjectivity.)

Accordingly, it might be more correct to say that the Victorian era is the era of perhaps the greatest minor poetry ever written in English. “Minor poetry” is not meant as a belittling term: The Victorians wrote in an age when for the first time, perhaps, poets were realizing that with respect to the world around it, poetry could only be minor. Tennyson, again, imagining a critic of the intense grief he displays in In Memoriam , asks: “Is this an hour / For private sorrow’s barren song, / When more and more the people throng / The chairs and thrones of civil power? / A time to quicken and to swoon, / When Science reaches forth her arms / To feel from world to world and charms / Her secret from the latest moon?” (section 21, ll. 13–20). Indeed, many still complain that Victorian literature marked the beginning of a general phenomenon of escapism which in the 20th century would become transmogrified into incessant television watching. (Victorian critics lambasted the widespread reading of novels in ways that the stern moralists of the second half of the 20th century lambasted the widespread failure to read novels instead of watching TV. These are really the same complaint.)

All of this means that Victorian literature in general and poetry in particular aimed at giving its readers pleasure. The Victorians could no longer quite believe—as Wordsworth had in the preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800)—that such pleasure could save the soul. The Victorians were the heirs of the romantics in many ways, not least in their sense that the pleasures of literature, difficult as they sometimes were, went as deep as the depth of the human soul. But for the Victorians, the human soul did not seem quite as deep as it did for their predecessors.

All of this is generalization, of course, but it is generalization that accounts for a range of Victorian reaction, from the insistence on the absolute accuracy to which human perception can attain, to be found in Arnold, to the counter-insistence on the primacy of subjective experience over any empirical accuracy, with which the essayist and critic Walter Horatio Pater countered Arnold, and which culminated in Wildean aestheticism. It also accounts for Yeats’s folkloric anachronizing on the one hand and the striking number of conversions to Catholicism, such as Hopkins’s, on the other, offering an account of the soul fiercely capable of the same minute severity as any faithchallenging science. Further, it accounts for the triumphal shrewdness of such a champion of English industrial and economic achievement as Kipling.

What these poets almost all share is a sense of poetry as giving pleasure. Once the burden is taken off literary pleasure as the royal road to transcendence, pleasure can be regarded as an end in itself, and the Victorians could write the kind of poetry that gave a purer pleasure than the strongly individualized poetic self-assertions to be found in the romantics. (John Keats is a partial exception and a high influence on the Victorians, especially on Tennyson.) If one thinks of the kind of poetry that we remember without remembering or caring who wrote it, then this is the kind of poetry that the Victorians wrote. This can be seen as much in the vogue for highly sophisticated dramatic monologues— as with Browning and Tennyson, who were inventing characters, not speaking for themselves—as in the nonsense verse of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. It is no accident that Francis Turner Palgrave’s great and wildly successful anthology Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics was a product of the Victorian age and ended with a few contemporary poems (Palgrave thanked Tennyson in his introduction), and that almost all its selections, from whatever age, sound Victorian.

The character of Palgrave’s collection culled from various poets can be found in the kinds of collections that individual Victorian poets put together, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. Similarly, among Tennyson’s most popular works were songs from the longer narrative works, such as the songs from The Princess: A Medley, which themselves are contextless, songs sung by characters, not spoken by them. FitzGerald pointed out that the Rubáiyát was an anthology (published alphabetically in Persian), which he gave the form of an eclogue (pastoral poem)—so that even when placed into a consecutive form, it is the stanzas that had priority, not the story they told. Even Tennyson described In Memoriam as a collection of lyrics, not as a consecutive work (though it is that, too, of course). Swinburne was another impresario of the evocative (partly through his study of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience ), and Yeats consistently described his poems as songs.

Idiosyncratic and unpredictable as so many of the Victorians were, they nevertheless wrote poems that people remember as poems rather than as the expressions of poets. They wrote poems that gave people pleasure as poems, and such pleasure is the most archaic and deeply rooted experience of poetry that any of us ever has. Thus, Melpomene, the muse of tragedy shamed by Urania’s rebuke in In Memoriam states that as an earthly muse, she owns “but a little art / To lull with song an aching heart, / And render human love his dues,” so that in the end her role is to intensify human experience, minor as it is compared to the transcendence where science and religion come together in the grandeur and immensity of the universe. She, on the other hand, ministering to purely human and earthly experience, has “darken’d sanctities with song” (section 37, l. 24).

None of this should suggest that Victorian poetry is cloying. Its intensity of grief and its apprehensions of despair rival those of any other poetic tradition or period. In fact, some of that intensity derives from a paradoxical acknowledgement of its uselessness. The idea that the human soul is minor, just as the poetry that soul expresses is minor, is a grim one—consonant with the Victorian insights of that greatest of analytic pessimists, Sigmund Freud. The Pre-Raphaelite poetry can have the last word here: The absolutely minor pleasures of decorative beauty—scorned as unworthy of poetry by too many grander aspirants—became for them the devastatingly precise detail which undercuts any notion of transcendence. (They are the forebears of such modern great poets as Elizabeth Bishop.) All there is, in the end, is the world of detail, without the saving importance that might turn loss into gain, as it did for the romantics, that might make pleasure any more than decorative. It is the success of Victorian poetry that it preserves the importance of the decorative, gives us something to hang onto on earth when there is nothing that poetry can communicate that will bring us into heaven.

Bibliography Browning, Robert. Essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley. London: Reeves and Turner. 1888. Hough, Graham Goulden. The Last Romantics. London: Duckworth, 1949. Houghton, Walter Edwards. Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830– 1870. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957. Trilling, Lionel, and Harold Bloom. Victorian Prose and Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Ricks, Christopher, ed. The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

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Societal shifts in the victorian era: marriage, men, and domesticity analyzing anne bronte’s the tenant of wildfell hall, a life of flawed virtue in the vicar of wakefield, victorian novel analysis: jane eyre by charlotte bronte, vintage cuff links for parties and special occasions, life path and first works of elizabeth barrett browning, victorian criminal class was nothing more than a middle-class myth.

Georgian era

Edwardian era

1820 - 1914

United Kingdom

During this era there were still issues within the social structure. The social classes of this era included the upper class, middle class, and lower class. Also there was an early baby boom problem. Child labor became an overarching issue in the early 1800s.

Christianity was the main religion in Victorian England. Also, Victorians made and appreciated developments in science. The most known scientific development was the theory of evolution to Charles Darwin.

The formal political system was a constitutional monarchy. At the national level, government consisted of the monarch and the two houses of Parliament, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Important political events during this period included the abolition of slavery in the British Empire; working-class political activism; the expansions of the franchise; the rise of liberalism as the dominant political ideology, especially of the middle class.

Queen Victoria came to the throne when she was just 18 years old and ruled Britain for over 60 years. During this era the country acquired unprecedented power and wealth. Political stability, and revolutionary developments in transport and communication was the reasons of Britain’s extention across the globe. Many of the intellectual and cultural achievements of this period are still used by people.

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King Arthur
British History
Civil Rights Movement
Westward Expansion
Imperialism
Manifest Destiny
American Revolution

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7: The Victorian Era

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7.1: The Victorian Era (1832–1901)
7.2: Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
7.3: Emily Brontë (1818–1848)
7.4: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
7.5: Robert Browning (1812–1889)
7.6: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
7.7: Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
7.8: Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

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I love the Victorian era. So I decided to live in it.

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Share All sharing options for: I love the Victorian era. So I decided to live in it.

My husband and I study history, specifically the late Victorian era of the 1880s and '90s. Our methods are quite different from those of academics. Everything in our daily life is connected to our period of study, from the technologies we use to the ways we interact with the world.

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Five years ago we bought a house built in 1888 in Port Townsend, Washington State — a town that prides itself on being a Victorian seaport. When we moved in, there was an electric fridge in the kitchen: We sold that as soon as we could. Now we have a period-appropriate icebox that we stock with block ice. Every evening, and sometimes twice a day during summer, I empty the melt water from the drip tray beneath its base.

Every morning I wind the mechanical clock in our parlor. Each day I write in my diary with an antique fountain pen that I fill with liquid ink using an eyedropper. My inkwell and the blotter I use to dry the ink on each page before I turn it are antiques from the 1890s; I buy my ink from a company founded in 1670. My sealing wax for personal letters comes from the same company, and my letter opener was made sometime in the late Victorian era from a taxidermied deer foot.

There are no modern lightbulbs in our house. When Gabriel and I have company we use early electric lightbulbs, based on the first patents of Tesla and Edison. When it's just the two of us, we use oil lamps. When we started using period illumination every day, we were amazed by how much brighter the light is from antique oil lamps than from modern reproductions.

(Estar Hyo Gyung Choi)

Our heat comes from 19th-century gas heaters and from an antique kerosene space heater. In the winter we tuck hot water bottles into bed with us, and even the cotton covers that I sewed for those bottles are made from period-appropriate fabric (its designs are copies of fabric patterns from the late 19th century). Our bed itself is an antique from our period of study, and since it didn't have a mattress when we bought it, I sewed one by hand and stuffed it with feathers.

A victorian man and woman sitting on a couch.

The author and her husband. (Estar Hyo Gyung Choi)

I bake all our bread from scratch, using a sourdough culture I keep constantly bubbling in the back corner of our kitchen in a bowl that belonged to my grandmother. When I want whipped cream or an omelet, I use an antique rotary eggbeater; when we want to grind something, we have a Victorian food chopper as well as mortars and pestles.

Whenever I'm inside my house I have an antique chatelaine hanging from my waist — a marvelous 19th-century accessory that combines elements that would remind a modern person of a charm bracelet, multi-tool, and organizer all in one. Mine usually holds a notebook, pincushion, and scissors, but I also have attachments for it ranging from a thimble holder to a matchbox, a coin box, or a pair of tweezers.

I bathe with a bowl and pitcher every morning, and for a nice long soak I use our cast-iron clawfoot bathtub. I wash my hair using Castile bar soap from a company established in 1839. (Shampooing with Castile soap is a piece of beauty advice I found in a Victorian magazine from about the time our house was built.) My hairbrush is a 130-year-old design, and my toothbrush has natural boar bristles.

Neither my husband nor I have ever had a cellphone; I've never even had a driver's license. On special outings when Gabriel and I go cycling together, I ride a copy of a high-wheel tricycle from the 1880s. Gabriel has three high-wheel bicycles, and he has ridden them hundreds of miles. On our vacation just last week, we rode our high-wheel cycles more than 75 miles along a historic railroad route between abandoned silver mines. I kept thinking of an article we had read in an 1883 cycling magazine about wheelmen riding bikes just like Gabriel's when they took a trip out to a mine.

The process didn't happen all at once. It's not as though someone suddenly dropped us into a ready-furnished Victorian existence one day— that sort of thing only happens in fairy tales and Hollywood. We had to work hard for our dreams. The life we now enjoy came bit by bit, through gifts we gave each other. The greatest gift we give each other is mutual support in moving forward with our dreams.

Victorian couple bikes down modern street

Even before I met Gabriel, we both saw value in older ways of looking at the world. He had been homeschooled as a child, and he never espoused the strict segregation that now seems to exist between life and learning. As adults, we both wanted to learn more about a time that fascinated each of us. But it took mutual support to challenge society's dogmas of how we should live, how we should learn. We came into it gradually — and together.

It's hard to say who started it. I was the first to start wearing Victorian clothes, but Gabriel, who knew how I'd always admired Victorian ideals and aesthetics, gave them to me as presents, a way for both of us to research a culture we found fascinating.

I was so intrigued by those clothes that I hand-sewed copies I could wear every day.

Soon after, I gave Gabriel an antique suit of his own, but tailoring men's clothes is a separate skill set, and it took him a while to find a seamstress who could make Victorian men's clothing with the same painstaking attention to historic detail that I was putting into my own garments.

Wearing 19th-century clothes on a daily basis gave us insights into intimate life of the past, things so private and yet so commonplace they were never written down. Features of posture, movement, balance; things as subtle as the way my ankle-length skirts started to act like a cat's whiskers when I wore them every single day. I became so accustomed to the presence and movements of my skirts, they started to send me little signals about my proximity to the objects around myself, and about the winds that rustled their fabric — even the faint wind caused by the passage of a person or animal close by. I never had to analyze these signals, and after a while I stopped even thinking about them much; they became a peripheral sense, a natural part of myself. Gabriel said watching me grow accustomed to Victorian clothes was like seeing me blossom into my true self.

When we realized how much we were learning just from the clothes, we started wondering what other everyday items could teach us.

When cheap modern things in our lives inevitably broke, we replaced them with sturdy historic equivalents instead of more disposable modern trash. Every birthday and anniversary became an excuse to hunt down physical artifacts from our favorite time period, which we could then study and use together.

The author with her high-wheel tricycle. (Estar Hyo Gyung Choi)

Everything escalated organically from there, and now our whole life revolves around this ongoing research project. No one pays us for it, but we take it more seriously than many people take their paying jobs.

The artifacts in our home represent what historians call "primary source materials," items directly from the period of study. Anything can be a primary source, although the term usually refers to texts. The books and magazines the Victorians themselves wrote and read constitute the vast bulk of our reading materials — and since reading is our favorite pastime, they fill a large percentage of our days. There is a universe of difference between a book or magazine article about the Victorian era and one actually written in the period. Modern commentaries on the past can get appallingly like the game "telephone": One person misinterprets something, the next exaggerates it, a third twists it to serve an agenda, and so on. Going back to the original sources is the only way to learn the truth.

We're devoted to getting our own insights and perspectives on the era, not just parroting stereotypes that "everyone knows." The late Victorian era was an incredibly dynamic time, with so many new and extraordinary inventions it seemed anything was possible. Interacting with tangible items from that time helps us connect with and share that optimism. They help us understand the culture that created them — a culture that believed in engineering durable, beautiful items that could be repaired by their users. Constantly using them helps us comprehend their context. Absorbing the lessons our artifacts teach us shapes our worldview. They are our teachers. Seeing their beauty every day elevates and inspires us, as it did their original owners.

It's a life that keeps us far more in touch with the natural seasons, too. Much of modern technology has become a collection of magic black boxes: Push a button and light happens, push another button and heat happens, and so on. The systems that dominate people's lives have become so opaque that few Americans have even the foggiest notion what makes most of the items they touch every day work — and trying to repair them would nullify the warranty. The resources that went into making those items are treated as nothing more than a price tag to grumble about when the bills come due. Very few people actually watch those resources decreasing as they use them. It's impossible to watch fuel disappearing when it's burned in a power plant hundreds of miles away, and convenient to forget there's a connection.

When we use resources through technology that has to be tended, we're far more careful about how we use them. To use our antique space heater in the winter, I have to fill its reservoir with kerosene and keep its wick and flame spreader clean; when we want to use it, I have to open and light it. It's not a burdensome process, but it's certainly a more mindful one than flicking a switch.

Not everyone necessarily wants to live the same lifestyle we have chosen, of course. But anyone can benefit from choices that increase their awareness of their surroundings and the way things they use every day affect them. Watching the level of kerosene diminish in the reservoir heightens our awareness of how much we're using, and makes us ask ourselves what we truly need. Learning to use all these technologies gives us confidence to exist in the world on our own terms.

The author and her husband.

And that, really, is the resource we find ourselves more and more in need of. My husband and I have slowly, gradually worked to base our lives around historical artifacts and ideals because — quite frankly — we love living this way. People assume the hard part of our lifestyle comes from the life itself, but using Victorian items every day brings us great joy and fulfillment. The truly hard part is dealing with other people's reactions.

We live in a world that can be terribly hostile to difference of any sort. Societies are rife with bullies who attack nonconformists of any stripe. Gabriel's workout clothes were copied from the racing outfit of a Victorian cyclist, and when he goes swimming, his hand-knit wool swim trunks raise more than a few eyebrows — but this is just the least of the abuse we've taken. We have been called "freaks," "bizarre," and an endless slew of far worse insults. We've received hate mail telling us to get out of town and repeating the word "kill ... kill ... kill." Every time I leave home I have to constantly be on guard against people who try to paw at and grope me. Dealing with all these things and not being ground down by them, not letting other people's hostile ignorance rob us of the joy we find in this life — that is the hard part. By comparison, wearing a Victorian corset is the easiest thing in the world.

This is why more people don't follow their dreams: They know the world is a cruel place for anyone who doesn't fit into the dominant culture. Most people fear the bullies so much that they knuckle under simply to be left alone. In the process, they crush their own dreams.

Sarah A. Chrisman is the author of the books Victorian Secrets: What A Corset Taught Me About the Past, the Present and Myself , and This Victorian Life: Modern Adventures in Nineteenth-Century Culture, Cooking, Fashion and Technology ; she also compiled and edited the Victorian etiquette guide True Ladies and Proper Gentlemen . For more information, visit her website.

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Exploring Victorian Era Art: A Visual Journey into the Past

As we journey back to the captivating realm of the Victorian era, our comprehension of its significance often hinges on its diverse and abundant body of art. Despite being under the influence of stringent societal norms and monarchy, art during the Victorian period thrived, being marked by its unique aesthetic, thematic richness, and profound commentary on the era’s socio-political context. From the repercussions of industrialisation to the flowering of romanticism in the atmosphere of strict morality, each artistic manifestation served as the period’s vivid chronicle. The works of noteworthy artists such as John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Edward Burne-Jones provide profound insights into the era’s ethos, not merely as individual pieces of beauty but as mirrors reflecting social, political, and cultural realities.

The Sociopolitical Context of Victorian Art

The victorian era context.

The Victorian era, covering Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837-1901, was a period of dramatic change in Britain, marked by an industrial revolution, rapid urbanisation, and the expansion of the British Empire. It signified a tremendous shift in various social, political, and economic aspects and had correspondingly profound effects on the artistic expressions of the time.

Art and Industrialisation

The rise of the industrial revolution during the Victorian era brought distinct changes to the landscape of Britain, as factories and railways replaced the rural idyll. This discharged a profound impact on the art scene, as artists sought to grapple with the effects of industrialisation and urbanisation. There was a new fascination with realism, evident through the artwork of the time, which depicted the contrasts of the industrialised society – the grime, poverty as well as the opportunities and economic prosperity it brought.

Artists also sought to explore the implications of industrialisation on nature. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, for instance, including artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, resisted the mechanised approach of the time and returned to more detailed, vibrant nature scenes, inspired by the early Renaissance era, offering an escapism from the grimy reality of urban scenes.

Monarchy and Victorian Art

The Victorian era is associated with the monarchy and the reign of Queen Victoria herself influenced the art scene significantly. Royal patronage played a significant role in promoting the arts during this time. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were major patrons and collectors of art, and their endorsement of certain styles or artists could enhance reputations and shape trends. Works of art often depicted the monarchy in grand, idealised scenes, reflecting the societal reverence towards the monarch.

Victorian art also celebrated the British Empire’s growth, often manifested through the depiction of exotic landscapes, architectural grandiosity and diverse cultures. This exploration evoked a sense of national pride and fascination with the exotic and unknown territories.

Art Reflecting Societal Norms and Values

Victorian art is often noted for its moralistic undertone and attention to detail. Narratives drawn from literature, history, and religion were common, each serving as scathing social commentaries or moral lessons. Key societal norms revolving around religion, morality, gender and class hierarchies profoundly influenced the art forms of this era.

For instance, artworks often portrayed women in domestic, virtuous roles conforming to the period’s notion of ‘the angel in the house’. However, as the era progressed and the women’s suffrage movement grew, depictions of women in art began to evolve, paving the way for more modern interpretations in the later years.

Victorian art stands as an intricate reflection of its era, providing insight into the societal complexities of the time. It wasn’t just an evolution of styles and techniques, but an art that responded and engaged with the changing epoch, mirroring the spirit and concerns of the Victorian age.

Image of Victorian-era art representing the various aspects discussed in the text

Characteristics of Victorian Art

Remembered for their detail, sentimentality, and deep symbolism, Victorian artworks carry the indelible imprint of 19th-century British culture. The Victorian era, named for Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 to 1901, was a period of continuing transformations across the socio-political spectrum. These changes profoundly shaped the artistic aesthetics in various mediums including painting, sculpture, and architecture of the time.

Painting in the Victorian Era

Paintings of the Victorian era are known for their diverse subjects, from scenes of everyday life to dramatic narratives and romanticised depictions of the British Empire. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, comprising renowned painters such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, rejected industrialisation and sought to return to the detailed and vibrant art of the early Renaissance. Their works are characterised by their richness of colour, intricate designs, and complex compositions, often conveying moral or social messages. Meanwhile, artists like William Powell Frith emerged with pieces that depicted large social scenes, both realistic and idealised, offering a detailed examination of Victorian society.

Sculpture in the Victorian Era

Sculpture in the Victorian age veered from the neoclassical style of the preceding Georgian era to a more realistic and dramatic approach. The works of Sir Francis Chantrey, a leading sculptor of the time, demonstrate the shift in taste with his detailed portrayals of prominent Victorians. The era also marked a revival of Gothic sculpture, intertwined with an increased focus on medieval aesthetics in architecture and design. Many Victorian sculptures were created as public monuments commemorating the lives of influential figures or significant events, serving both as works of art and historical records.

Architecture in the Victorian Era

Victorian architecture was defined by its eclectic style, combining elements from various periods and cultures. The influence of the Gothic Revival was profound, with architects such as Augustus Pugin designing elaborately detailed structures reminiscent of medieval churches. This style can be seen in iconic structures such as the Houses of Parliament. Residential buildings often featured ornate decorations, asymmetrical layouts, and high-pitched roofs.

The use of new materials and structural techniques also emerged in this era. Cast iron, steel, and glass allowed for the creation of large, bright, and open spaces, as seen in the Crystal Palace – an embodiment of Victorian technological prowess and the Industrial Revolution.

The art of the Victorian era, encompassing painting, sculpture, and architecture, is widely appreciated for its intricacy, its capacity for telling dramatic narratives, and its conveyance of significant moral messages. The distinctive elements of this period serve as a mirror to the hopes, worries and aspirations of society during this time, reflecting the multifaceted nature of an increasingly changing Britain. This evolution is strikingly evident, whether it’s in the profound symbolism found in the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, the meticulous accuracy of Victorian era sculptures, or the sumptuous splendour of Gothic Revival architecture. Each medium depicts an aspect of the remarkable fusion of tradition and innovation that hallmarked the Victorian times.

An image showcasing various Victorian artworks and architectural structures with intricate details and vibrant colors

Notable Victorian Artists and their Works

John everett millais.

John Everett Millais, best known as a key figure behind the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was a distinguished painter and illustrator of the Victorian times. Born on English soil back in 1829, Millais demonstrated exceptional artistic prowess from a young age, earning a spot at the Royal Academy School at the tender age of eleven. Some of his most appreciated works include “Ophelia”, a sorrowful figure from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and “Christ In The House Of His Parents”. These paintings are an exceptional representation of the Pre-Raphaelite ideology, showcasing an obsession for intricate details and intense use of colour. Despite developing a broader and more relaxed technique in his later years, Millais maintained his position as a highly respected portrait artist within his peers.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Another luminary of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was noted for his romantic subjects and symbolism in his artworks. Rossetti, besides being a gifted painter, was a respected poet and translator. This passion for literature heavily influenced his artwork which often depicted scenes from Romantic poetry and Medieval history. His famous artworks include “The Awakened Conscience”, “Beata Beatrix”, and “Proserpine”. Rossetti had a bold and distinctive style, often using rich colours and intricate designs that presented a fantastical, dream-like quality. His paintings remain instrumental in defining the opulent visual aesthetics of the Victorian age.

Edward Burne-Jones

Also a pivotal figure of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, Edward Burne-Jones came into limelight during the latter part of the Victorian era. Unlike most artists of his time, Burne-Jones’s art emphasised on the narrative or story. Drawing from classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the Christian faith, his masterpieces are famous for the mythical dreaming figures and intricate attention to detail. His famous works include “The Star of Bethlehem”, and “The Golden Stairs”. Burne-Jones utilised a limited colour palette and intricate detailing that resulted in richly romantic and evocative compositions, marking him as one of the last major history painters of the Victorian era.

The Victorian era, marked by the remarkable contributions of figures like Millais, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones had an undisputed impact on art history. Their work, although met with a mix of praise and criticism, ushered in a new chapter of artistry reflecting the changing ideologies of their time. Their unique styles and innovative approaches continue to profoundly influence artists today.

Image of paintings by Victorian era artists depicting intricate details, vibrant colors, and dream-like themes.

Victorian Art and Its Influence on Later Movements

Implications of victorian art on later movements.

The artistry of the Victorian period spanned the early 19th century to the beginning of the 20th and made a profound impact on numerous subsequent art movements due to its narrative-based, detail-driven, and social and moral value reflecting nature. Of significance is the emergence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood during this time. Their mission to resist the rapidly industrialising society led them back to producing more vibrant and elaborate art.

Victorian Aesthetics in Modern Art

Despite the seemingly diametric reaction from Modernists, the principles of Victorian aesthetics did not vanish altogether post the 19th century. For instance, the Industrial Revolution brought about significant change to the British landscape which artists such as J.M.W. Turner documented extensively. This attention to the changing world can be seen in later movements like Futurism and Cubism.

The ornate detailing in Victorian art influenced the immersive patterns and decorative aesthetics of the Art Nouveau movement. This style carried forward the extravagance of ornamentation typical of the Victorian era. Meanwhile, the Victorian fascination with the exotic and Oriental was mirrored in the Japonisme trend which influenced Impressionists like Claude Monet.

Victorian Art: Rejection and Incorporation

Subsequent movements did reject some aspects of Victorian art. The Aesthetic movement, the Arts & Crafts movement, and the Art Nouveau style began to place emphasis on art for its beauty alone, thus resisting the Victorian notion of art as a medium for delivering moral or social commentary. A shift from detailed narrative paintings towards abstract expressions of emotion represents a key departure from Victorian principles.

Nonetheless, the influence of Victorianism is woven into the fabric of several later developments. Surrealism, for instance, adopted Victorian symbolism and subverted it to convey the uncanny and unsettling. Even in aspects austerely rejected by Modernists, such as sentimentality and narrative depiction, the impact of Victorianism persists. This thread can be seen in contemporary illustration and graphic novels, thereby adding varied layers to the rich tapestry of art history.

The Lasting Influence of Victorian Art

Victorian art has profoundly shaped the evolution and understanding of both traditional and contemporary art. Its notable impact can be seen in the way its principles and aesthetics have been either overtly dismissed or subtly woven into diverse facets of artistic expression. This examination of the Victorian era offers insight into the cyclical progression and transformative nature of art, serving as an ongoing conversation between different periods and movements.

A depiction of various art movements influenced by Victorian art, showcasing the evolution of artistic styles over time.

The Reception and Legacy of Victorian Art

Victorian art’s role in today’s artistic landscape.

In the modern lens, Victorian art is principally recognised as a pivotal point in art history, bridging the gap between the traditional and the modern, blending romantic influences while anticipating the advent of modernism. It stands as a monumental symbol of style and substance that reflect the focus on aesthetics and the emerging middle class of that time. Significant artistic movements birthed in this era, such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, continue to echo in today’s art world with their idealised, often nature-inspired, subjects being viewed as iconic representations.

Commemorations and Exhibitions of Victorian Art

Victorian art continues to enjoy consistent attention and recognition. Exhibition spaces worldwide consistently feature Victorian artists’ works. Notably, London’s Tate Britain, home to the national collection of British art, regularly showcases an extensive collection of Victorian art. Other significant spaces include the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Guildhall Art Gallery in London, as well as The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, all housing notable Victorian art collections and often creating exhibitions around them.

Market Value of Victorian Art

In the art market, Victorian paintings consistently fetch substantial prices, particularly works by notable artists such as John Atkinson Grimshaw or John Everett Millais. The latter sees his artwork, “Ophelia,” often regarded as one of the most expensive British paintings ever sold. The buying and selling of Victorian art play a significant role in the contemporary art market, maintaining a healthy demand due to the artists’ mastery and the artworks’ historical value.

Influence of Victorian Art on Contemporary Artists

Victorian art influences contemporary artists in various ways. Intricate detailing, emphasis on mood and emotion, and incorporation of nature are facets of Victorian art frequently replicated today. Artists are often inspired by its blend of realism and emotive interpretation, finding a parallel in the modern art world’s diverse styles.

Moreover, the social commentary inherent in much of Victorian Art influences contemporary artists. For instance, the social realism movement during the Victorian era, which addressed disparities in wealth and highlighted societal issues, inspires modern artists who utilise their work as a social platform.

Appreciation and Criticism of Victorian Art

Critics and admirers of Victorian art acknowledge its tendency towards nostalgic romanticizing while others appreciate its evocation of unease and melancholy. There is an established admiration for the magnificence and spectacles it portrays, the contrasts of light and dark, the overwhelming grandeur. However, it also retains its share of critique, with critics pointing to its often overly sentimentalized depictions of life and its sidestepping of the harsh realities of Victorian times.

Lasting Legacy of Victorian Art

Ultimately, the lasting legacy of Victorian art continues to permeate the contemporary art scene, through its influence on modern artists, its sustained prominence in exhibitions and collections, and the high market demand for its works. Despite differing perspectives on its stylistic approach and content, it remains an integral part of art history, serving as a critical transition point that shaped the development of modern art.

An image showcasing Victorian art, depicting a romantic scene with nature-inspired elements.

Photo by kazuend on Unsplash

Delving into the realm of Victoria’s royal courts, gas-lit streets, and poignant narratives frozen in the canvas allows us to appreciate how this epoch has moulded the landscape of modern art. While Victorian art occupies a remarkable place in history itself, its fascinating legacy continues to be apparent in contemporary art, making the era a timeless beacon of artistic brilliance. The profound impact of this era on subsequent movements and its enduring influence on the art market and contemporary artists is a testament to its validity in our socio-cultural narrative. Therefore, Victorian art, embedded within the fabric of time, remains more than just a series of vintage masterpieces – it’s a formative thread in the grand tapestry of art history, linking our present insights with an illustrious past.

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8 New Books We Recommend This Week

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

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Our fiction recommendations this week include a “gleeful romp” of a series mystery, along with three novels by some heavy-hitting young writers: Téa Obreht, Helen Oyeyemi and Tommy Orange. (How heavy-hitting, and how young? Consider that Obreht was included in The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” issue in 2010 — and she’s still under 40 today. So is Oyeyemi, who was one of Granta’s “Best Young British Novelists” in 2013, while Orange, at 42, has won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the John Leonard Prize and the American Book Award. The future is in good hands.)

In nonfiction, we recommend a painter’s memoir, a group biography of three jazz giants, a posthumous essay collection by the great critic Joan Acocella and a journalist’s look at American citizens trying to come to terms with a divided country. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

THE MORNINGSIDE Téa Obreht

After being displaced from their homeland, Silvia and her mother move into the Morningside, a weather-beaten luxury apartment building in “Island City,” a sinking version of New York in the middle of all-out climate collapse. Silvia learns about her heritage through the folk tales her aunt Ena tells her, and becomes fascinated with the mysterious woman who lives in the penthouse apartment.

“I marveled at the subtle beauty and precision of Obreht’s prose. … Even in the face of catastrophe, there’s solace to be found in art.”

From Jessamine Chan’s review

Random House | $29

A GRAVE ROBBERY Deanna Raybourn

In their ninth crime-solving tale, the Victorian-era adventuress and butterfly hunter Veronica Speedwell and her partner discover that a wax mannequin is actually a dead young woman, expertly preserved.

“Throw in an assortment of delightful side characters and an engaging tamarin monkey, and what you have is the very definition of a gleeful romp.”

From Sarah Weinman’s crime column

Berkley | $28

THE BLOODIED NIGHTGOWN: And Other Essays Joan Acocella

Acocella, who died in January, may have been best known as one of our finest dance critics. But as this posthumous collection shows, she brought the same rigor, passion and insight to all the art she consumed. Whether her subject is genre fiction, “Beowulf” or Marilynne Robinson, Acocella’s knowledge and enthusiasm are hard to match. We will not see her like again.

"Some critics are haters, but Acocella began writing criticism because she loved — first dance, and then much of the best of Western culture. She let life bring her closer to art."

From Joanna Biggs’s review

Farrar, Straus & Giroux | $35

WANDERING STARS Tommy Orange

This follow-up to Orange’s debut, “There There,” is part prequel and part sequel; it trails the young survivor of a 19th-century massacre of Native Americans, chronicling not just his harsh fate but those of his descendants. In its second half, the novel enters 21st-century Oakland, following the family in the aftermath of a shooting.

“Orange’s ability to highlight the contradictory forces that coexist within friendships, familial relationships and the characters themselves ... makes ‘Wandering Stars’ a towering achievement.”

From Jonathan Escoffery’s review

Knopf | $29

PARASOL AGAINST THE AXE Helen Oyeyemi

In Oyeyemi’s latest magical realist adventure, our hero is a woman named Hero, and she is hurtling through the city of Prague, with a shape-shifting book about Prague, during a bachelorette weekend. But Hero doesn’t seem to be directing the novel’s action; the story itself seems to be calling the shots.

“Her stock-in-trade has always been tales at their least domesticated. … In this novel, they have all the autonomy, charisma and messiness of living beings — and demand the same respect.”

From Chelsea Leu’s review

Riverhead | $28

3 SHADES OF BLUE: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool James Kaplan

On one memorable occasion in 1959, three outstanding musicians came together for what may be the greatest jazz record ever, Davis’s “Kind of Blue.” Kaplan, the author of a Frank Sinatra biography, traces the lives of his protagonists in compelling fashion; he may not be a jazz expert but he knows how to tell a good story.

“Kaplan has framed '3 Shades of Blue' as both a chronicle of a golden age and a lament for its decline and fall. One doesn’t have to accept the decline-and-fall part to acknowledge that he has done a lovely job of evoking the golden age.”

From Peter Keepnews’s review

Penguin Press | $35

WITH DARKNESS CAME STARS: A Memoir Audrey Flack

From her early days as an Abstract Expressionist who hung out with Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning at the Cedar Bar to her later success as a pioneering photorealist, Flack worked and lived at the center of New York’s art world over her long career; here she chronicles the triumphs, the slights, the sexism and the gossip, all with equal relish.

“Flack is a natural, unfiltered storyteller. … The person who emerges from her pages is someone who never doubts she has somewhere to go.”

From Prudence Peiffer’s review

Penn State University Press | $37.50

AN AMERICAN DREAMER: Life in a Divided Country David Finkel

Agile and bracing, Finkel’s book trails a small network of people struggling in the tumultuous period between the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections. At the center is Brent Cummings, a white Iraq war veteran who is trying to cope with a country he no longer recognizes.

“Adroitly assembles these stories into a poignant account of the social and political mood in the United States. … A timely and compelling argument for tolerance and moral character in times of extreme antagonism.”

From John Knight’s review

Random House | $32

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

James McBride’s novel sold a million copies, and he isn’t sure how he feels about that, as he considers the critical and commercial success of “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.”

How did gender become a scary word? Judith Butler, the theorist who got us talking about the subject , has answers.

You never know what’s going to go wrong in these graphic novels, where Circus tigers, giant spiders, shifting borders and motherhood all threaten to end life as we know it .

When the author Tommy Orange received an impassioned email from a teacher in the Bronx, he dropped everything to visit the students who inspired it.

Do you want to be a better reader? Here’s some helpful advice to show you how to get the most out of your literary endeavor .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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The two women's openweight boats on the rough water at Hammersmith Bridge during the Cambridge University Boat Race trials in December.

Do not enter the water: how dirty Boat Race has captured world’s attention

Sewage scandal has put extra focus on the race but enthusiasm is undimmed with Oxford favourites to end rivals’ dominance

T hroughout the Boat Race’s 195-year history, it has been regarded by the rest of the world as one of those peculiar British eccentricities, like Marmite and pantomime, that are best ignored. Not this year.

The New York Times, Fox News, ABC, CNN and numerous other international media have run stories in the buildup to Saturday’s race – although it is what is floating in the Thames, rather than on top of it, that has piqued their interest.

As Thursday’s New York Times put it: “The warning was stern: Do not enter the water. Not because of the tide. Not because of sharks. Because of the sewage.

“For almost two centuries, rowers from Oxford University have raced their rivals from Cambridge in a contest that typically ends with jubilant members of the victorious crew jumping into the River Thames in celebration. This year they will be staying as dry as possible.”

The discovery of high levels of E coli on the 4.25-mile course has not only further fuelled public anger at the deteriorating state of Britain’s rivers, but – as first revealed by the Guardian – also led organisers to issue tough new safety guidelines .

And according to Cambridge’s Carys Earl, a 21-year-old medicine undergraduate, everyone is taking those rules very seriously. “As soon as we get off the water – and before we touch any of our other kit or food – we immediately wash our hands,” she says. “We are also showering, covering cuts or bruises, and then making sure we’ve got fresh kit to get into. We’re constantly washing the boats and washing equipment as well.”

Meanwhile Oxford’s Annie Sharp, a 24-year-old who is studying for an MSc in water science, policy and management, has a professional as well as sporting interest in the gunk in the Thames. “The problem links back to the Victorian era,” she points out. “The sewage system was fantastic at the time, but it was built for a two million population. Now we have over 9.5 million.

A water sample taken from the River Thames around Hammersmith Bridge in West London. High levels of E.coli have been found along a stretch of the River Thames that will be used for the historic Oxbridge Boat Race.

“But there’s a really strong focus on innovation to make things better,” she says, pointing to new biofilter technology and different ideas to prevent nitrates leaching into the groundwater. “While for the River Thames, there is the Super Sewer, which will be finished this year. I was part of working on that previously, and I think it’s going to be really fantastic and transformative.”

But Earl’s and Sharp’s focus is mostly on Saturday afternoon when more than 250,000 people are expected to crowd the Thames for the 78th women’s and 169th men’s Boat Race. For Earl it has been some journey, given that she went to state school and stepped into a boat only when she arrived at Cambridge.

“My college put on a barbecue in Freshers’ Week and said anyone who’s interested can come down and get in the boat,” she says. “I thought it would be a bit of fun, and so I signed up for the novice programme. I absolutely loved it and it just sort of continued.”

Such has been Earl’s progress that she is now trying out for the British Under-23 squad. “It’s everybody’s dream to compete for a national team,” she says. “We’ve done erg tests, and my partner and I also went to the GB water trials where we came third overall, and first for the Under 23s, so we’ve now been invited back to the second round later in April. But for now all my focus is on Saturday’s race.”

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Earl will be sitting in the six seat, part of the engine room of Cambridge’s boat. But when she glances across at the start she will see Sharp, sitting in the same position for Oxford, confident of victory.

“We’ve got a lot of fantastic talent in our boat,” says Sharp, who is determined to win so she can tease her father, who rowed in the Isis (reserve) boat in 1990 but was disqualified at the bandstand. “We have six fantastic returnees. So people aren’t gonna be fazed by anything that happens in the race. Since day one we’ve really been building a fantastic boat and boat speed.”

Carys Earl of the Cambridge University Boat Club women’s blue boat looks towards head coach Paddy Ryan during a training session on the River Great Ouse on February 28th 2024.

The bookies agree with that assessment. Cambridge have won six straight in the women’s race, as well as four of the past five men’s races. However, Oxford are favourites this year in both events. But one randomising factor, according to Sharp, is the high water levels of the Thames this week, which have made conditions “definitely bumpy”.

Whatever happens, Earl says that the fact both Oxford and Cambridge have fused their men’s and women’s teams into one club over the past two years is further proof of the progress the women are making.

“There’s a lot better inclusivity and equality,” she says. “Getting to race on the Tideway on the same day as the men, as we have done since 2015, has been a gamechanger.”

The Boat Race

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