This sixth volume covers the period from Dickens to Hardy. It begins with an account of the social and intellectual context of English literature during this, the Victorian, period, followed by a survey of the literature itself.

          The rest of the book is made up of a series of essays dealing in detail with Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Hardy, Carlyle and Ruskin, three autobiographical novelists (Rutherford, Gissing, and Butler), Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and others. There is also an essay on the architecture of the Victorian Age. Finally the volume contains an Appendix of biographies and bibliographies.

CONTENTS:

PART 1
Notes on the Victorian Scene
The Democratic Experiment – Expansion and Its Consequences – Self-help – Utilitarianisn: The Meaning of Plugson, Gradgrind, Bounderby & Bulstrode – The Ferment of Social Ideals – Liberty, Anarchy and Culture – Religion and the Challenge of Expansion – Reactions against Liberalism in Religion – Literacy and Humanism

PART 2
The Literary Scence
Victorian Literature – The Poetry – The Novel – Other Prose – The Drama

PART 3
The Genius of Charles Dickens
Society in Thackeray and Trollope
The Early Victorian Social-Problem Novel
The Reviews and Magazines
The Victorian Reading Public
The Poetry of Tennyson
Robert Browning
The Bronte Sisters and Wuthering Heights
George Eliot
Language and Literature in the Victorian Period
The Voice of Prophecy: Carlyle and Ruskin
Matthew Arnold
George Meredith: Novelist
Three Autobiographical Novelists
Pre-Raphaelite Poetry
George Manley Hopkins
The Last Phase
Hardy’s Tales Ancient and Modern
The Changing Environment: City and Countryside
Aspects of Victorian Architecture