A Love of Victorian Literature

 

My favourite literary genre is Victorian Literature (1837-1901). I can't get enough of it. I have met a few people who tell me that they find it long winded and boring. I leave feeling like they have criticised one of my children.

I am not alone in my love of this period. The nineteenth century is regarded by many people, myself included, as the golden age of English Literature. At this time the novel became the most popular form of writing in England.

Many of the novels of the period deal with the realities and issues of the day, like the dangers of factory work, the difficulties faced by the lower classes and the way women and children were treated. One of the things I love about these stories is that in so many of them hard work, determination and love win in the end, with just a little luck thrown in. Virtue is usually rewarded and those who do wrong are suitably punished. In the latter part of the era, following Dickens' death in 1870, authors tended to provide fewer happy endings. These books I have really had to work with.

My love of Victorian literature began when I was seven. Miss Whitaker, my top infants teacher read us Black Beauty (1877). I pestered my Mum for a copy of my own and read it many times. She also bought me a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses (1885). I loved these poems about shadows, going to bed at daytime in summer and the moon with a face like the clock in the hall. Then she gave me a copy of Alice Through the Looking Glass (1871). I loved the sheer weirdness of Lewis Carroll.

When I was ten my Mum presented me with two more Victorian novels - and abridged Wuthering Heights (1847) and Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843). I loved both of these books. it's funny but until I was writing this blog I hadn't realised what an important part my Mum played in my choice of favourite genre.

For O level we studied The Importance of Being Earnest ((1895) and there began a lifelong love of Oscar Wilde. As a class we were given the choice for one of our novels between Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd and Lawrence's Son's and Lovers. I'm sure that you have guessed that Hardy was my choice but the majority of my class opted for Lawrence, which was very good but I still felt cheated.

By my late teens I was Bronte obsessed and devoured the unabridged Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre (1847), Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). I then moved on to Dickens. I found his writing too detailed and descriptive. A friend told me that he had been paid by the instalments and eked them out. Maybe I needed and abridged Dickens! A few years ago I decided to try his writing again now that I am older and began with A Tale of Two Cities, which I absolutely loved. I enjoy his descriptive writing now and am gradually working my way through his works.

Another favourite writer of  mine is Elizabeth Gaskell. Such a wonderful writer, her books are filled with a strong sense of how well she knew the world outside her home and how much she wanted people to realise the unfairness of it and the bad treatment of the poor. I began with Mary Barton (1845). I was hooked and quickly moved on to North and South (1854) and Cranford (1853). Recently I read Wives and Daughters (1866) her last and unfinished novel. Oh how I love her work and I still have quite a few of her books to read. Although her writing can be grim and gritty I love her happy endings.

As I said before, after 1870 happy endings became less common. That is where I hit my downfall with Victorian Literature. The first Thomas Hardy I attempted was Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891). I sobbed my way through it. I followed this with Jude the Obscure (1895) - that book destroyed me and I swore that I would never read another Hardy novel. Thirty years later I read that Hardy didn't write another novel after the criticism of Tess and Jude and I felt guilty and decided that it was time that I dealt with a little reality in amongst my happy endings. I read Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) and loved it. There are now quite a few Hardy's in my TBR pile.

Many wonderful Victorian authors I have only read one book by and I still  have lots of works by George Eliot, Wilkie Collins and Robert Louis Stevenson waiting to be read. There were so many books written at this time that will delight me for years to come.

In amongst my favourite happy endings I also found some super Gothic horror that I loved - Frankenstein (1818), Dracula (1897), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). They knew how to do horror in the nineteenth century.

A few years ago I decided that I needed to branch out with my reading. I'm reading much more widely now but, while I enjoy the variety, my heart still belongs with the Victorian novel. I love the detailed, descriptive writing, I love the moralistic tales and I love the fact that it makes me think about the treatment of the poor today, the need for worker's rights and how many other things still apply today.

There is so much Victorian Literature that I still haven't read, all written with the descriptive detail that I love. I will continue to broaden my reading but I shall be slipping a few more Victorian books into my pile each month.