Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction to The Victorian Era
A Growing Power
Grinding Mills, Grinding Poverty
Corn Laws, Potato Famine
“The Two Nations”
The Politics of Gender
Empire
Faith and Doubt
Victorian Domesticity
Cultural Trends
Technology
Cultural Identities
Realism
The Victorian Novel
Poetry
Drama
Prose Non-Fiction and Print Culture
The English Language in the Victorian Era
History of the Language and of Print Culture
THOMAS CARLYLE
from Sartor Resartus
from Book 1
Chapter 11, Perspective
from Book 2
Chapter 6, Sorrows of Tuefelsdræckh
Chapter 7, The Everlasting No
Chapter 8, Centre of Indifference
from Book 3
Chapter 8, Natural Supernaturalism
from The French Revolution
Volume 1, Book 6, Chapter 6, The Fourth Estate
Volume 2, Book 3, Chapter 7, Death of Mirabella
Volume 3, Book 4, Chapter 7, Marie-Antoinette
Volume 3, Book 7, Chapter 8, Finis
from Past and Present
from Book 1
Chapter 1, Midas
Chapter 6, Hero-Worship
from Book 3
Chapter 1, Phenomena
Chapter 2, Gospel of Mammonism
Chapter 11, Labour
Chapter 13, Democracy
from Book 4
Chapter 4, Captains of Industry
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
from The History of England
from Chapter 3, State of England in 1685
from Milton
CONTEXTS: WORK AND POVERTY
Anonymous, “The Steam Loom Weaver”
from Elizabeth Bentley, Testimony before the 1832 Committee on the Labour of Children in Factories
from Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures
from William Dodd, A Narrative of the Experience and Sufferings of William Dodd, Factory Cripple, Written by Himself
from Joseph Adshead, Distress in Manchester, Chapter 3, “Narratives of Suffering”
Thomas Hood, “Song of the Shirt”
from Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, Chapter 3, “The Great Towns”
from Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, Chapter 6
from Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, “Boy Crossing-Sweepers and Tumblers”
from Charles Dickens, Hard Times, Chapter 5, “The Key-Note”
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
from The Idea of a University
SUSANNA MOODIE
from Roughing it in the Bush
Introduction
Chapter 15, The Wilderness, and our Indian Friends
from Chapter 22, The Fire
from Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush
Chapter 1, Belleville
Chapter 7, Camp Meetings
Chapter 8, Wearing Mourning for the Dead
In Context: Sample of Susanna Moodie’s 1839 Correspondence
A “Crossed” Letter
MARY SEACOLE
from Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands
Chapter 1, My Birth and Parentage
Chapter 8, I Long to Join the British Army Before Sebastopol
Chapter 9, Voyage to Constantinople
from Chapter 13, My Work in the Crimea
JOHN STUART MILL
What is Poetry?
from On Liberty
from Chapter 2, Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
Chapter 3, Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being
from The Subjection of Women
Chapter 1
CONTEXTS: THE PLACE OF WOMEN IN SOCIETY
from Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Daughters of England: Their Position in Society, Character and Responsibilities
from Anonymous, “Hints on the Modern Governess System,” Fraser’s Magazine
from Harriet Taylor, The Enfranchisement of Women
from Coventry Patmore, The Angel in the House
from Eliza Lynn Linton, “The Girl of the Period,” Saturday Review, March 1868
from Frances Power Cobbe, “Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Minors,” Fraser’s Magazine, December 1868
from “Between School and Marriage,” The Girl’s Own Paper, Vol. 7
from Emma Brewer, “Our Friends the Servants,” The Girl’s Own Paper, Vol. 14
from Sarah Grand, “The New Aspect of the Woman Question,” North American Review 158
from Mona Caird, “Does Marriage Hinder A Woman’s Self-Development?” Lady’s Realm
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
The Cry of the Children
To George Sand: A Desire
To George Sand: A Recognition
A Year’s Spinning
The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point
from Sonnets from the Portuguese
Sonnet 1 (“I thought once how Theocritus had sung”)
Sonnet 7 (“The face of all the world is changed, I think”)
Sonnet 13 (“And wilt thou have me fasten into speech”)
Sonnet 21 (“Say over again, and yet once over again”)
Sonnet 22 (“When our two souls stand up erect and strong”)
Sonnet 24 (“Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife”)
Sonnet 26 (“I lived with visions for my company”)
Sonnet 28 (“My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!”)
Sonnet 43 (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”)
from Aurora Leigh
Book 1
from Book 2
from Book 5
A Curse For A Nation
A Musical Instrument
In Context: Books on Womanhood
from Catherine Napier, Woman’s Rights and Duties
In Context: Children in the Mines
from Richard Hengist Horne, Report of the Children’s Employment Commission
In Context: The Origin of “the Finest Sonnets”
from Edmund Gosse, Critical Kit-Kats
In Context: Images of George Sand
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Mariana
The Palace of Art
The Lady of Shalott
The Lotos-Eaters
Ulysses
The Epic [Morte d’Arthur]
Morte d’Arthur
[Break, break, break]
Locksley Hall
from The Princess
[Sweet and Low]
[The Splendour Falls]
[Tears, Idle Tears]
[Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal]
[Come Down, O Maid]
[The Woman’s Cause is Man’s]
Maud
In Memoriam A.H.H.
The Eagle
The Charge of the Light Brigade
from Idylls of the King
The Holy Grail
[Flower in the Crannied Wall]
Vastness
Crossing the Bar
In Context: Images of Tennyson
from Thomas Carlyle, Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 5 August 1844
In Context: Victorian Images of Arthurian Legend
In Context: Crimea and the Camera
Roger Fenton, Selected Photographs
CHARLES DARWIN
from The Voyage of the Beagle
from Chapter 10, Tierra del Fuego
from Chapter 17, Galapagos Archipelago
In Context: Images from The Beagle
from On the Origin of Species
Introduction
from Chapter 3, Struggle for Existence
from Chapter 14, Recapitulation and Conclusion
from The Descent of Man
from Chapter 21, General Summary and Conclusion
In Context: Defending and Attacking Darwin
from Thomas Huxley, “Criticisms on The Origin of the Species”
from Thomas Huxley, “Mr. Darwin’s Critics”
from Punch
In Context: Social Darwinism
from Herbert Spencer, Social Statistics: or, the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed
ELIZABETH GASKELL
Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras
The Old Nurse’s Story
ROBERT BROWNING
Porphyria’s Lover
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
My Last Duchess
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad
The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church
Meeting at Night
Parting at Morning
How It Strikes a Contemporary
Memorabilia
Love Among the Ruins
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”
Fra Lippo Lippi
The Last Ride Together
Andrea del Sarto
A Woman’s Last Word
Two in the Campagna
Essay on Shelley
Caliban upon Setebos
from The Ring and the Book
from Book 12
In Context: A Parody of The Ring and the Book
Charles Stuart Calverley, The Cock and the Bull
Bishop Blougram’s Apology
CHARLES DICKENS
A Christmas Carol
Preface
Stave 1, Marley’s Ghost
Stave 2, The First of the Three Spirits
Stave 3, The Second of the Three Spirits
Stave 4, The Last of the Spirits
Stave 5, The End of It
In Context: A Victorian Christmas
from Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz
Chapter 2, A Christmas Dinner
In Context: The Workhouse
Charles Dickens, “A Walk in the Workhouse,” from Household Words
The Perils of Certain English Prisoners
EDWARD LEAR
The Owl and the Pussy-cat
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!
Selected Limericks
The Dong and the Luminous Nose
CONTEXTS: CHILDHOOD AND CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
from Charlotte Mary Yonge, “A Scene in the Early Life of the May Family”
from Thomas Hughes, “After the Match,” Tom Brown’s Schooldays
from Charles Kingsley, “Tom’s Life as a Water Baby”
from Thomas Hood, “London Street Boys: Being a Word About Arabia Anglicana,” The Boy’s Own Volume of Facts, Fiction, History, and Adventure
from Austin Q. Hagerman, “Never Sulk,” The Child’s Own Magazine
from Charles Darwin, A Biographical Sketch of an Infant
from Walter Pater, The Child in the House
from Hilaire Belloc, The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts
Introduction
The Big Baboon
The Frog
Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit
from Rudyard Kipling, “How the Camel Got His Hump,” Just So Stories for Little Children
from Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
Chapter 3: Marilla Cuthbert Is Surprised
from Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Chapter 1: The River Bank
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
The Spotted Dog
from An Autobiography
Chapter 12, On English Novels and the Art of Writing Them
GRACE AGUILAR
Past, Present, and Future: A Sketch
The Hebrew’s Appeal
The Wanderers
EMILY BRONTË
Remembrance
Plead for Me
The Old Stoic
My Comforter
[Loud without the wind was roaring]
[A little while, a little while]
[Shall Earth no more inspire thee]
[No coward soul is mine]
Stanzas
[The night is darkening round me]
[I’m happiest when most away]
[If grief for grief can touch thee]
CONTEXTS: THE NEW ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Roger Fenton, “Proposal for the Formation of a Photographic Society”
from Charles Dickens, “Photography,” Household Words 7
Photography and Immortality
from Elizabeth Barrett, Letter to Mary Russell Mitford
from Sir Frederick Pollock, “Presidential Address,” Photographic Society
Selected Photographs
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
Epi-strauss-ium
To spend uncounted years of pain
from Amours de Voyage
Canto 1
The Latest Decalogue
“There is no God,” the Wicked Saith
Qui Laborat, Orat
Is it true, ye gods, who treat us
In the Great Metropolis
That there are powers above us I admit
Seven Sonnets on the Thought of Death
Duty—that’s to say complying
Easter Day
Easter Day II
Jacob
Recent English Poetry
In Context: Letters between Arthur Clough and Matthew Arnold
GEORGE ELIOT
O, May I Join the Choir Invisible
from Brother and Sister Sonnets
Sonnet 11 (“School parted us; we never found again”)
from Adam Bede
Chapter 17, In Which the Story Pauses a Little
Silly Novels By Lady Novelists
from The Natural History of German Life
Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft
THE SPASMODIC POETS
Alexander Smith
from A Life-Drama
Sydney Dobell
from Balder
William Edmondstoune Aytoun
from Firmillian: or The Student of Badajoz. A Spasmodic Tragedy
JOHN RUSKIN
from Modern Painters
A Definition of Greatness in Art
Of Truth of Water
from The Stones of Venice
The Nature of Gothic
from Modern Manufacture and Design
Fiction Fair and Foul
The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
Cassandra
DION BOUCICAULT
The Octoroon
In Context: The Octoroon’s Alternative Ending
MATTHEW ARNOLD
The Forsaken Merman
Isolation. To Marguerite
To Marguerite—Continued
The Buried Life
The Scholar-Gipsy
Stanzas from The Grande Chartreuse
Dover Beach
Obermann Once More
East London
West London
Preface to the First Edition of Poems
from The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
from Culture and Anarchy
from Chapter 1, Sweetness and Light
CONTEXTS: RELIGION AND SOCIETY
from Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
from Chapter 4
from Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
from Chapter 37
from Anthony Trollope, The Warden
from Chapter 3
from Chapter 5
from George Eliot, “Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming” (Westminster Review, October 1855)
from Anthony Trollope, Doctor Thorne
from Chapter 32: Mr. Oriel
from Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford
from Chapter 11: Muscular Christianity
from Arthur Hugh Clough, Dipsychus
“‘There Is No God,’ the Wicked Saith”
from John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua
from Chapter 5: The Position of My Mind Since 1845
from Samuel Smiles, Character
from Chapter 7: Duty—Truthfulness
from Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now
from Chapter 22: Lord Nidderdale’s Morality
from Chapter 60: Miss Longestaffe’s Lover
from Goldwin Smith, “Can Jews be Patriots?” (The Nineteenth Century, May 1878)
from Amy Levy, Reuben Sachs
from Chapter 7
from Chapter 8
from Thomas Huxley, “Agnosticism and Christianity”
from Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
from Part 3, Chapter 4
WILKIE COLLINS
The Diary of Anne Rodway
GEORGE MEREDITH
Modern Love
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
The Blessed Damozel
The Woodspurge
Jenny
My Sister’s Sleep
Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee
from The House of Life
The Sonnet
Sonnet 6a, Nuptial Sleep
Sonnet 10, The Portrait
Sonnet 77, Soul’s Beauty
Sonnet 78, Body’s Beauty
Sonnet 97, A Superscription
Sonnet 101, The One Hope
Hand and Soul
The Orchard Pit
In Context: The “Fleshly School” Controversy
from Robert Buchanan, The Fleshy School of Poetry: Mr. D.G. Rossetti
from D.G. Rossetti, The Stealthy School of Criticism
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Goblin Market
In Context: Illustrating Goblin Market
A Triad
Remember
A Birthday
After Death
An Apple-Gathering
Echo
Winter: My Secret
“No, Thank You, John”
A Pause Of Thought
Song (“She sat and sang alway”)
Song (“When I am dead, my dearest”)
Dead Before Death
Monno Innominata
Cobwebs
In an Artist’s Studio
Promises like Pie-crust
In Progress
Sleeping at Last
LEWIS CARROLL
Verses Recited by Humpty Dumpty
Jabberwocky
In Context: “Jabberwocky”
from Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
from Chapter 1, Looking-Glass House
from Chapter 6, Humpty Dumpty
In Context: The Photographs of Lewis Carroll
JAMES THOMSON
The City of Dreadful Night
WILLIAM MORRIS
The Defence of Guenevere
The Haystack in the Floods
from Hopes and Fears for Art. Five Lectures
The Beauty of Life
from News from Nowhere
Chapter 1, Discussion and Bed
Chapter 2, A Morning Bath
How I Became A Socialist
In Context: William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones
W.S. GILBERT
from H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass that Loved a Sailor
Song (“When I was a Lad”)
from Patience
Song (“If You’re Anxious for to Shine”)
AUGUSTA WEBSTER
A Castaway
By The Looking Glass
from Mother and Daughter: An Uncompleted Sonnet Sequence
Sonnet 1 (“Young Laughters, and My Music! Aye Till Now”)
Sonnet 8 (“A little child she, half defiant came”)
Sonnet 9 (“Oh weary hearts! Poor mothers that look back!”)
Sonnet 15 (“That same day Death who has us all for jest”)
Sonnet 19 (“Life on the wane: yes sudden that news breaks”)
Sonnet 20 (“There’s one I miss. A little questioning maid”)
Sonnet 27 (“Since first my little one lay on my breast”)
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
The Triumph of Time
Itylus
Hymn to Proserpine
The Leper
A Forsaken Garden
Ballad of Villon and Fat Madge
Anactoria
Laus Veneris
Faustine
Dolores
The Garden of Proserpine
Hertha
A Nympholept
from William Blake
WALTER PATER
from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry
Preface
Conclusion
from Appreciations
Aesthetic Poetry
THOMAS HARDY
The Son’s Veto
In Context: Hardy’s Notebooks and Memoranda
An Imaginative Woman
In Context: Illustrations to “An Imaginative Woman”
MATHILDE BLIND
The Russian Student’s Tale
A Mother’s Dream
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
God’s Grandeur
The Wreck of the Deutschland
The Windhover: to Christ our Lord
Pied Beauty
Felix Randal
Spring and Fall: to a Young Child
[As kingfishers catch fire]
[No worst, there is none]
[I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day]
[Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort]
That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection
[Thou art indeed just, Lord]
In Context: The Growth of “The Windhover”
from Journal 1870—1874
[“Inscape” and “Instress”]
from Letter to Robert Bridges, 25 February 1879
Author’s Preface
“MICHAEL FIELD”—KATHARINE BRADLEY AND EDITH COOPER
The Magdalen
La Gioconda
A girl
It was deep April, and the morn
To Christina Rossetti
WILLIAM HURRELL MALLOCK
Every Man His Own Poet; or, The Inspired Singer’s Recipe Book
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Requiem
from A Child’s Garden of Verses
Whole Duty of Children
Looking Forward
The Land of Nod
Good and Bad Children
Foreign Children
The Pavilion on the Links
OSCAR WILDE
Impression du Matin
E Tenebris
To Milton
from “The Critic as Artist”
from “The Decay of Lying”
Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Young King
The Importance of Being Earnest
In Context: Wilde and “The Public”
Interview with Oscar Wilde, St. James Gazette, January 1895
In Context: The First Wilde Trial (1895)
from Transcripts of the Trial
VERNON LEE
The Virgin of the Seven Daggers
from The Handling of Words
Chapter 3, Aesthetics of the Novel
from Chapter 5
Section C, Carlyle and the Present Tense
from Chapter 6
Section A, Meredith
Section B, Kipling
Section C, Stevenson
Section D, Hardy
Chapter 8, Can Writing Be Taught?
CONSTANCE CAROLINE WOODHILL NADEN
The Lady Doctor
The Sister of Mercy
Love Versus Learning
Scientific Wooing
The New Orthodoxy
Natural Selection
Solomon Redivivus, 1886
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
AMY LEVY
Xantippe
Magdalen
SIR HENRY NEWBOLT
Vitaï Lampada
He Fell Among Thieves
RUDYARD KIPLING
Gunga Din
The Widow at Windsor
Recessional
The White Man’s Burden
If—
The Story of Muhammad Din
The Mark of the Beast
Mrs. Bathhurst
England and the English
In Context: Victoria and Albert
In Context: The “White Man’s Burden” in the Philippines
Platform of the Anti-Imperialist League
CONTEXTS: RACE, EMPIRE, AND A WIDER WORLD
from Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans
Chapter 1, Entrance of the Mississippi
Chapter 3, Company on Board the Steam Boat
Chapter 34, Return to New York—Conclusion
from Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Minute on Indian Education”
from Report of a Speech by William Charles Wentworth, Australian Legislative Council
from William H. Smith, Smith’s Canadian Gazetteer
Carlyle, Mill, and “The Negro Question”
from Thomas Carlyle, “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question,” Fraser’s Magazine
from John Stuart Mill, “The Negro Question,” Fraser’s Magazine
To the Editor of Fraser’s Magazine
from Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor
Hindo Beggars
Dickens and Thackeray on the Race Question
from Charles Dickens, “The Noble Savage,” in Household Words
from William Makepeace Thackeray, Letters to Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth
Conservatives, Liberals, and Empire
from William Gladstone, “Our Colonies”
from Benjamin Disraeli, “Conservative and Liberal Principles”
from Cecil Rhodes, Speech delivered in Cape Town, 18 July 1899
from David Livingstone, “Cambridge Lecture Number 1”
Eliza M., “Account of Cape Town,” King William’s Town Gazette
from Agnes Macdonald, “By Car and Cowcatcher,” Murray’s Magazine
from John Ruskin, “Inaugural Lecture,” Slade Lectures
from Henry M. Stanley, In Darkest Africa
from William Booth, “Why ‘Darkest England’?”
from Sara Jeannette Duncan, “The Flippancy of Anglo-India”
from Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa
from W.S. Caine, “Picturesque India: A Handbook for European Travelers”
Victor Daley, “When London Calls”
THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT
“Michael Field”
From Baudelaire
The Poet
John Davidson
A Northern Suburb
Constance Naden
Illusions
Ernest Dowson
Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration
To One in Bedlam
Spleen
Lionel Johnson
Plato in London
The Dark Angel
The Darkness
CHARLOTTE MEW
The Farmer’s Bride
Madeleine In Church
Passed
APPENDICES
Reading Poetry
Maps
Monarchs and Prime Ministers of Great Britain
Glossary of Terms
Texts and Contexts: A Chronological Chart
Bibliography
Permissions Acknowledgments
Index of First Lines
Index of Authors and Titles