1. Victorian Literature
Ma and Weber 2012

2. Historical Context Victorian Period was from 1832-1901.
Named after Queen Victoria (monarch from ).
Surprising absence of warfare after defeat of Napoleon (1815).
Britain played a supporting role in the Crimean War ( ), but did not experience a major war until WWI in 1914.

3. Industrial Advances
Industrial revolution of 18th century continues into 19th century.
This creates numerous towns, goods, wealth, and jobs (rising influential middle class).
This also created some problems: sanitation, pollution, child labor etc.

4. Major Social/Political Issues
Parliamentary representation granted to less wealthy men.
Women and children not forced to worked more than 10 hours/day.
First Jewish member of parliament in 1858
Irish potato blight (famine). Influx of Irish immigrants to America.

5. Major Social/Political Issues
Colonial/Political:
Hong Kong made a colony in 1842
Japan opens trade to West in 1854
British stop sending convicts to Australia in 1868
War with the Zulus in South Africa in 1879
Indian National Congress formed in 1885 – starts pushing for independence

6. Queen Victoria
Became queen of England (and Ireland) in 1837 at the age of 18.
Married first cousin
Albert in 1840
Albert died in 1861
Deep depression after
Albert’s death
Had 9 children and
34 grandchildren
Longest rein of any
British Monarch

7. Major Authors Theme of “love and loss” in textbook
Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Poet Laureate
(You get to learn more about him tomorrow)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – “Sonnet 43”

8. Other Prominent Authors
Robert Browning (married to Elizabeth)
Gerard Manley Hopkins ( )
Jesuit Priest
Poems emphasize: love of nature, conviction of a transcendental power, and individuality.

9. Spring and Fall: To a Young Child p.842
Hopkins
Spring and Fall: To a Young Child p.842
Maragret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! As the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

10. Hopkins Pied Beauty p.843 Glory be to God for dappled things-
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced-fold, fallow, and plow;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour, adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.

11. Homework
P. 842 # 2, 4, & 5
P. 844 # 1, 2, & 6
Read the poems on the following pages: 804, 805, 806, & 824