Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear wrote nonsense or light verse, a genre that plays with sounds and rhythm in melodious ways. Poets like Tennyson, the Brownings, and Rossetti frequently wrote poetry in order to create a powerful emotional effect on the reader, but some Victorian poets also wrote simply to entertain. The poem contains some of the most famous lines in literature, including “’Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all,” and was widely quoted in the Victorian period. Tennyson wrote this book-length sequence of verses to commemorate the death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Tennyson also wrote lyric, or non-narrative poetry, including what is perhaps the most famous poem of the Victorian era, In Memoriam A. Alfred, Lord Tennyson also used the form in “Ulysses” (1842), in which Ulysses recounts his reasons for setting out on a last voyage to the men with whom he will sail. Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” (1842), in which the Duke of Ferrara describes how he (probably) killed his last wife to the man who is arranging his next marriage, is one of the most famous examples of a dramatic monologue. Victorian poets also developed a new form called the dramatic monologue, in which a speaker recites the substance of the poem to an audience within the poem itself. Narrative poetry could also be much shorter, like Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” (1862), which recounts how a woman is seduced into eating beautiful fruit sold by goblins and how her sister saves her after she sickens. The poem tells the story of Aurora Leigh, a woman who seeks a career as a poet after rejecting an inheritance and a male suitor, and so tells, in part, the story of Barrett Browning’s own struggles to make her poetic way in the world. The Victorians experimented with narrative poetry, which tells a story to its audience, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1856), an entire novel written in verse. The Romantic poets, particularly William Wordsworth (who lived through the beginning of the period, dying in 1850) were revered and widely quoted. Poetry was one of the most popular genres of the Victorian period.
Victorian literature differs from that of the eighteenth century and Romantic period most significantly because it was not aimed at a specialist or elite audience rather, because the steam printing press made the production of texts much cheaper and because railroads could distribute texts quickly and easily, the Victorian period was a time when new genres appealed to newly mass audiences. Victorian literature reflects these values, debates, and cultural concerns. Reformers fought for safe workplaces, sanitary reforms, and universal education. The working class, women, and people of color were agitating for the right to vote and rule themselves. Religious faith was splintering into evangelical and even atheist beliefs. Although now the period is popularly known as a time of prim, conservative moral values, the Victorians perceived their world as rapidly changing. New technologies like railroads and the steam printing press united Britons both physically and intellectually. During this era, Britain was transformed from a predominantly rural, agricultural society into an urban, industrial one. The Victorian period of literature roughly coincides with the years that Queen Victoria ruled Great Britain and its Empire (1837-1901). Special thanks to Mary Bowden of Indiana University for writing this introduction!
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