Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Historical Fiction - Victorian Historical Fiction

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VICTORIAN HISTORICAL FICTION

Sir John Marriott

SOURCE: "The Victorian Era: Social Reform in Fact and Fiction," in English History in English Fiction, 1940. Reprint by Kennikat Press, 1970, pp. 251-69.

[In the following excerpt, Marriott presents an overview of nineteenth-century historical fiction, noting that its authors were concerned with portraying the Victorian way of life and discussing the social issues of that time.]

At each stage of our journey the way becomes more arduous, the impedimenta heavier, the problems more baffling. That is pre-eminently true of the Victorian era. The embarrassment is, however, to some extent relieved by the fact that not all the great Victorian novelists dealt with contemporary affairs. Thackeray's (1811-63) history, for instance, belongs to the eighteenth century. The best-beloved characters of Charles Dickens (1812-70) are very early if not prae-Victorian. Even George Eliot (1819-80), though...

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1. Introduction
2. Representative Works
3. Definitions And Characteristics
4. Victorian Historical Fiction
5. American Historical Fiction
6. Realism In Historical Fiction
7. Further Reading
8. Copyright