Great Novels of the Victorian Era Volume 1 (Civitas Library Classics)

Whereas Queen Elizabeth I shaped England in her image by indomitable will, Queen Victoria presided over her age with patience, steadfastness, and devotion to duty. Her long reign (1837-1901) was a time of contrasting ideals, gigantic talents, and unparalleled expansion in nearly every field. It was also marked by religious doubt and decline and the rise of triumphant materialism. Great Britain gave itself entirely to imperialism with horizons that now stretched around the globe. It was an age both prurient and prudish; people did not speak openly of sexual realities, yet they had lusty appetites and enormous families and sought to be respectable and mannerly even if they were not very moral about it. And outwardly pious if they were not inwardly religious. Although the Victorians were anything but poetic in their utilitarian philosophies, they nevertheless produced some of the world’s finest poetry. The literature of the period is a splendid debate on the many dimensions of this spiritual and aesthetic puzzlement.

This volume includes ten classic novels from some of the most widely read and regarded authors of the time, including Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Includes an active table of contents.

• Lorna Doone, R.D. Blackmore
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
• Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens
• Silas Marner, George Eliot
• Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell
• Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
• Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
• Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
• Can You Forgive Her?, Anthony Tollope
• The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde