The Victorian Age of Literature

(THE VICTORIAN AGE OF LITERATURE reviews the lives and works of all the leading literary figures of the period, providing insights into their sources of inspiration and assessing their achievements. At the same lime it seeks to place Victorian literature in its historical context and to show how it is permeated by the political, social and religious concerns of the age. These concerns are highlighted in the opening section of the Handbook, which describes some of the salient features of the Victorian era, and they are then explored further in the accounts of the writers and their works that follow, with the result that the Handbook not only points up the huge range and diversity of Victorian literature but also clarifies the issues and attitudes that run through it and that give it its distinctive flavour)