ENG 357 The Victorian Novel
England ruled roughly a quarter of the earth’s surface during Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901). In their era of globalization, the Victorians imagined the world as enormous, and therefore full of possibility, and yet tightly networked, and therefore manageable. The Victorian novel was perhaps the supreme literary achievement of the period: an exploration of how the self could negotiate a world of seemingly endless possibility. Authors explored may include Bronte, Dickens, Eliot, Gaskell, Haggard, Hardy, Stoker, Thackeray, Trollope, and Wilde.