Victorian literature is that produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) or the Victorian era. It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century. The 19th century is often regarded as a high point in British literature as well as in other countries such as France, the United States and Russia. Books, and novels in particular, became ubiquitous, and the "Victorian novelist" created a legacy of works with continuing appeal. Many novels were published in serial form, along with short stories and poetry, in such literary magazines as Household Words.

 

The 19th century saw the novel become the leading form of literature in English. The works by pre-Victorian writers such asJane Austen and Walter Scott had perfected both closely-observed social satire and adventure stories. Victorian novels tend to be idealized portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance, love and luck win out in the end; virtue would be rewarded and wrongdoers are suitably punished. They tended to be of an improving nature with a central moral lesson at heart, mixed with a heavy dose of sentiment. While this formula was the basis for much of earlier Victorian fiction, the situation became more complex as the century progressed.

 

Children's literature

The Victorians are sometimes credited with 'inventing childhood', partly via their efforts to stop child labour and the introduction of compulsory education. As children began to be able to read, literature for young people became a growth industry, with not only established writers producing works for children (such as Dickens' A Child's History of England but also a new group of dedicated children's authors. Writers like Lewis Carroll, R.M.Ballantyne and Anna Sewell wrote mainly for children, although they had an adult following. Other authors such as Anthony Hope and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote mainly for adults, but their adventure novels are now generally classified as for children. Other genres include nonsense verse, poetry which required a child-like interest (e.g. Lewis Carroll). School stories flourished:Thomas Huges' Tom Brown's Schooldays and Kipling's Stalky & Co. are classics.

 

Supernatural and fantastic literature

The pre-Victorian Gothic Tales of the late eighteenth century left Victorian readers with a taste for the mysterious and fantastic. These tales often centered on larger-than-life characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, Phileas Fogg, and other fictional characters of the era, such as Dracula, Edward Hyde, The Invisible Man, and many other fictional characters who often had exotic enemies to foil.

 

These tales eventually developed into the separate genres of Crime and Mystery, Horror and Science Fiction that have remained popular to the present day.