Elizabeth Gaskell never completed her final novel, Wives and Daughters, due to her early death in 1865. It appeared serially in The Cornhill Magazine between August 1864 and January 1866. Her last work is considered her best, representing the pinnacle… Read More ›
Charles Kingsley wrote his most popular work, the patriotic Westward Ho!, for adults, although it quickly fell into the category of children’s literature. While Kingsley had long been a political radical, the onset of the Crimean War, which many British… Read More ›
When William Harrison Ainsworth wrote Rookwood, he was struggling against a recent bankruptcy of the business he shared with his father-in-law. Returning to the practice of law in 1830 and anticipating the birth of his third daughter, according to biographer… Read More ›
Caroline Clive’s popular novel Paul Ferroll was likely published at Clive’s expense, first advertised for sale in Publisher’s Circular. While Clive (1801–73) had published poetry, the novel was her first, and ultimately most successful, attempt at fiction. By March 1856,… Read More ›
First serialized in Robin Goodfellow and then in The Sixpenny Magazine, Mary Braddon’s most famous novel, Lady Audley’s Secret, became an instant hit with the reading public, if not with critics. In its year of publication in volume form, 1862,… Read More ›
Dinah Mulock (Craik) emphasized nonconformist ideals in her popular fifth novel, John Halifax, Gentleman. Nonconformist churches believed that each member should freely respond to the Gospel and take responsibility for their own membership, while the church should maintain its congregation’s… Read More ›
Already known as a writer with a social conscience, Charles Reade published It Is Never Too Late to Mend specifically to stimulate public interest in social revolution. He proved successful, spurring his reading public to lead a movement to reform… Read More ›
Serialized between January 1864 and August 1865, Anthony Trollope’s first in his Palliser series, Can You Forgive Her? proved instantly popular. Based on reworked material from his failed comedy The Noble Jilt, its plot focuses on Victorian discontent with social… Read More ›
Barchester Towers was Anthony Trollope’s second in a group of novels, following The Warden (1855), later called the Barsetshire sequence. Published in 1857, it featured Trollope’s trademark interest in religion as politics. In his focus on who would receive the… Read More ›
The last of George Meredith’s novels, The Amazing Marriage resembles his previous works in its defense of women against men’s errors. In his fiction and real life, Meredith declared man to be in need of woman, who could educate and… Read More ›
Charles Kingsley’s second novel, Alton Locke, guaranteed his fame as a writer about controversial topics. A clergyman, Kingsley regularly attacked social injustice and supported laborers’ rights. Like other socially conscious writers including George Gissing, Kingsley publicized inexcusable conditions in which… Read More ›
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