MACMILLAN HISTORY OF LITERATURE General Editor: A. NORMAN JEFFARES MACMILLAN HISTOR Y OF LITERATURE General Editor: A. NormanJeffares Published OLD ENGLISH LITERAT URE Michael Alexander ENGLISH GOTHIC LITERATURE Derek Brewer SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Murray Roston SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENG LISH LITERATURE Bruce King EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Maximillian Novak NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Margaret Stonyk TWENTIETH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Harry Blamires ANGLO-IRISH LITERATURE A. NormanJeffares THE LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES Marshali Walker Forthcoming THE LITERATURE OF SCOTLAND RoryWatson COMMONWEALTH LITERATURE Alastair Niven A HISTORY OF LITERATURE IN THE IRISH LANGUAGE Declan Kiberd MACMILLAN HISTORY OF LITERATURE NINETEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Margaret Stonyk M Macmillan Press London @ Margaret Stonyk 1983 All rights reserved. No part ofthis publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First published 1983 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS L TD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-26922-0 ISBN 978-1-349-17267-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17267-2 Typeset by WESSEX TYPESETTERS L TD Frame, Somerset Contents List of Plates x Editor's Preface Xlii Introduction 1. 'The most glorious years': 1800-30 3 The Romantic Context 3 'The vision splendid': the Romantic poets 10 Wordsworth 10 Coleridge 15 Southey 21 Shelley 23 Keats 26 Byron 30 'Phenomena of nature': the Romantic prose- writers 34 Hunt 34 Lamb 36 Hazlitt 38 De Quincey 39 Peacock 41 The restraining judgement 43 Scott 43 Austen 48 Crabbe 52 Moore 54 Landor 56 Keble 58 VI CONTENTS 'Seeing is believing': the private vision 59 Dorothy W ordsworth 59 Mary Shelley 60 Clare 62 Beddoes 64 Darley 66 Haydon 68 Burney 70 Mitford 70 Cobbett 71 2. 'Excitement of every kind'; 1830-50 73 , A large young hopefulness': the 1830s 75 The free play of talent: novelists of the 1830s 75 Disraeli 75 Bulwer Lytton 77 The chastening of Romanticism 79 Mill 79 Tennyson 81 Tennyson Turner 85 Hood 86 Barham 88 The Spasmodics 89 Browning 91 Seekers oflight: the hero as man ofletters 95 Dickens 95 Carlyle 98 The move to social commitment: the 1840s 102 'Hanging on to the skirts ofhistory': novelists and the social context 102 Ainsworth 102 Thackeray 103 'The frontier of all accustomed respectabilities' 107 Borrow 107 Kinglake 108 'The autobiographies ofnations': individual views of history 109 Macaulay 109 Ruskin 111 Spectators ab extra: deliberating outsiders 115 CONTENTS VII Barnes 115 Lear 117 Clough 118 Rossetti 121 'The school of experience': women writers ofthe 1840s 126 Charlotte Bronte 126 Emily Bronte 129 Anne Bronte 130 Barrett Browning 133 3. The disinterested intelligence: 1850-70 136 'Scenes of an awful drama': the condition-of- England question 140 Mayhew 140 Kingsley 142 Dickens 146 'The hopeless tangle of our age': the poet in his public role 150 Tennyson 150 Arnold 153 Browning 158 The illumination of the commonplace 160 Trollope 160 George Eliot 163 'We lack, yet cannot fix upon the lack': the poetry of introversion and fantasy 168 Morris 168 Dixon 172 C. Rossetti 173 Patmore 175 Allingham 178 Meredith 179 Swinburne 182 'A moral, if only you look for it': popular fiction 185 Collins 188 Le Fanu 189 Reade 191 'The pulse ofthought': the private man in public life 193 Ruskin 193 Vlll CONTENTS Newman 196 Darwin 199 'U nsanctified intellects': the realm of non sense 200 'Lewis Carroll' 200 Calverley 202 Gilbert 203 4. 'Thunders in thp. distance': 1870-1900 205 'The embittered hour': nature and disenchantment 211 Hardy 211 Je fferies 215 Housman 217 'Coped and poised powers': a spectrum of latc-nineteenth-century writers 218 Hopkins 218 A. Meynell 221 Francis Thompson 224 Blunt 226 J ames Thomson 228 Bridges 230 Lang 231 du Maurier 233 The hero as Punch: two iconoclasts 235 Butler 235 Shaw 237 'Exact estimates of life': naturalism and the novel 240 Moore 240 Gissing 243 'Sad company': Pater and the poets ofthe 1890s 245 Pater 245 Davidson 248 Beardsley 250 Wilde 251 Yeats 255 'England, my England': the patriotic alternative 257 Austin 257 Henley 257 CONTENTS IX Kipling 260 Newbolt 263 Stevenson 263 'The winter solstice': drama in the nineteenth century 265 'Travellers at daybreak': the end of an era 270 Further reading 274 Chronological table 280 Index 300