Write a note on major Victorian novelist

Name:-  Kubavat  Kishan B.

Semester :- 2

Roll no :- 11

 Enrolment No :- Pg14101021

Year :- 2014-15

Paper No :- 6

Paper Name :- The Victorian Literature

Topic :-  Write a note on major Victorian novelist

Email ID :- kishan.kubavat@gmail.com

Submitted to :-  Department of English

                Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University  

Introduction

When the Victoria became queen in 1837, English literature seemed to have entered upon a period of lean years, In marked contrast with the poetic fruitfulness of Romantic age. Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron had passed away and is seemed as if there were no writer in England to filled their places.

Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot are the major novelists of the Victorian age. Dickens using the novel to solve social problem, Thackeray to point the life of society and George Eliot to teach the fundamental principles of morality.

The influence of these three writer is reflected in all the minor novelists of the Victorian age. Dickens is reflected in Charles Reade, Thackeray in Anthony Trollope and the Bronte sisters and George Eliot’s psychology in George Meredith.

   Now, we are discuss the major novelists of the Victorian Age.

     Major Novelists of the Victorian Age

        

  The Age of Victorian is produced so many novelists like Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Mary Ann Evans/ George Eliot and many more.

Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870 )

Life

Born	Charles John Huffam Dickens 7 February, Hampshire England
Died	9 June 1870 (aged 58 ) Higham, kent, England
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	English

He was born at Landport in 1812. At the eleven years of age the boy was taken out of school and went to work in the celletr of a blacking factory. At this time he was , in his own words – a “queer small boy ” ; who suffered as he warked and we can appreciate the boy and the suffering more when we find both reflected in the character of David Copterfield. It is a heart- reading picture, the sensitive child working from dawn till dark for a few pennies. A small legacy ended this wretchedness, bringing the father from the prison and sending the boy to Wellington house Academy a worthlers and brutal school, widently, whose head master was in Dickens word , a most ignorant fellow and a tyrant. He learned a little at this talck interested in stories. But his experience resulted in his famous pichere of Dathbots Halls Nicholees Nickelly, which helped largely to mitigate the evils of private school in England.

Marvelously a keen observer three things by Dickens by keen observation, his active imagination and the actors spirit which unlimited him, furnish a key to his whole life and writing.

When only fifteen years old, he left the school and again went to work and within two years we find him reporting important specter. At the age of 21 he drop his first little sketch “ Mr. minns and his cousin ” and it appeared with other stories in his first book ‘ Sketch by Boz in 1835’. Hus best known work Pickwick was published serially in 1836-1837. And Dickens fame and fortune were mude, Pickwick was followed replied by ‘ Oliver Twist ’, ‘Nicholas Nicklely’, ‘Old curiosity shop’.

In 1842, while still a youngman, Dickens was invited to visit the united states and Canada. Where his works were even better known than in England and where he received as the guest of the nation and treated with every mark of honour appreciation. Then he turned back to London streets, and in the five years from 1848 to 1853 appeared “ Dombey and son ”, “David Copperfield”, and  “Bleak House”. Three remarkable novels which indicates that he had rediscovered his own power genius.

He died in 1870,over his unfinished Edwin Drood, and was burled in west minister Abbey.

His Novels

If we read nothing else of Dickens, once year at ehristmas time, we should remember him renew our youth by reading one of his holidays stories. ‘ The cricket on the Hearth’, ‘The Chimes’ and above all the unrivaled christmas carol.

Of the novels, David Copperfield is regarded by many as Dicken’s masterpiece. It gives us the author’s own boyhood and family for pure fun and hilarity Pickwick will always be a favourite.

          A  Tale of Two Cities is also consider as his great book it is an absorbing story , with a carefully constructed plot. A  Tale of Two Cities is written in Dicken’s usual imaginative out look of life and his revels his fondness for fine sentiments and dramatic episodes.

          His first three novels ‘Pickwick’, ‘Oliver Twist’, and  ‘ Nicholas Nicklely’, which show how he passed from fun to serious purpose and his later works are ‘Bleak House’, ‘Dombey and Son’, ‘Our mutual friend’, and ‘Old Curiosity shop’.  

2) William Makepeace Thackeray

( 1811 – 1863 )

Life

Born	William Makepeace Thackeray          18 July 1811 Calcutta, British India
Died	24 December, 1863 (aged 52) London, England
Occupation	Novelist, Poet
Nationality	English
Period	1829-1864 ( published posthumously)
Genre	Historical Fiction
Notable Works	Vanity Fair

         

   Thackeray was born in 1811 in Calcutta. Where his father held a civil position under the Indian Government. When he was five years old his father died, and the mother returned with her child to England and Thackeray was sent to the famous Charterhouse School, of which he has given us a vivid picture in “ The New Comes.”

          In 1829 Thackeray entered Trinity College Cambridge but left after less than two years without taking a degree and went Germany Framle, where he studied with the idea of becoming an artist. He began his literary career by writing satires on society for magazines. The “Yalloplush Papers”,  “ The Great Hoggarty Diamond”, “Catherine”, “ The Fitz Boodlers”, “The Book Of Snobles”, “Barry Lyndon”. And various other immature work made him known with the publication of  Yanity fair ( 1847-48). He recognized as one of the great novelists of his day. All his earlier works are Satire, some upon society, other upon the popular novelists. Bulewer, Disaraeli, and especially Dickens.

          After the success of Vanity Fair, Thackeray wrote the three novels of his middle life upon child his fame chiefly rests Pendennis in 1850, Henry Esmond in 1852, and The New comes in 1855. He died in 1863 and buried in west minister Abbey.

      

Works of Thackeray

              

          

         His early satires were written while he was struggling to earn a living from the magazines, and open Henry Esmond (1852), his most perfect novel. He has an traaredlnary knowledge of 18^th century literature he reproduced its style indetaic. Both in style and in matter Esmond, deserves to rank probably the best historical novel in our language.

          Vanity Fair, (1847-48) is the best known of Thackeray’s novels. It was his first great work and was untended to express his own view of social life about him on the whole, it is the most powerful but not the most whole some of Thackeray’s work.

         

      His second important novel, Pendennis (1849-50) have a continuation of the satire on society begun in Vanity fair.

         

    Two other novels, The new comes (1855) and The Virginians (1859) complete the list of Thackeray’s great work of fiction. The New Comes, deserves a very high place- some critics placing it at the head of the author’s works like all Thackeray’s novel it is a story of human frailty. But here the author’s innate gentleness and the her is perhaps the most genuine and lovable of all his characters.

       

     Thackeray is known in English Literature as an essayist as were as novelists. His English Humorists and The Four Georges are among the finest essay of the nineteenth century. The Four Georges is in a vein of delicate satire and presents a rather unflattering picture of four of England’s ruler and of the court’s in which they moved. Both these works are remarkable for their exquisite style, their gentle humour their keen already criticism and for the intimate knowledge & sympathy which making the people of the past age live once more in the written pages.

         

 Besides being a realist and satirist, Thackeray is essentially a moralist and his all work producing a moral impression. He is master of a pure & simple English style. Whatever he expresses perfectly.

3)  Mary Ann Evans, George Eliot

( 1819 – 1880 )  

   

Life

Born	Marry Ann Evans 22 November, 1819 Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England
Died	22 December, 1880 ( aged 61) Chelsea, Middlesex, England
Resting Place	Highgate Cementary (east) Highgate, London
Pen name	George Eliot
Occupation	Novelist
Period	Victorian

        

  Marry Ann Evans known to us by her pen name of George Eliot, began to write nearly forty years of age. She was born at Arbury farm, Warwickshire in 1819. Her parents were plain, honest falk of farmer of these days. A few monty’s after her birth the family moved another home in the parish. Where his childhood was largely spent for a few years she studied at two private school, for but the death of her mother called her, at seventeen years of age, take entire charge of the household. There after her education was gained wholly by miscellaneous reading.

          A turning point in her career and the real beginning of her Literary life. Under sympathetic influence she began to write fiction for the magazine, her first story being “Amos Barton” (1857). [ which was later included in the scenes of derical life (1858) ]

          Her first long novel Adam Bede, appeared early in 1859. And unexpected success proved to be an inspiration and she completed ‘The Mill on the Floss’, and began ‘Silas Marner’, during the following year. ‘Romola’ (1862-63), ‘Felix Holt the Redical’ (1866), and ‘The Spanish Gypsy’ (1868) was his famous work with publication of Middlemarch (1871-72). George Eliot came back again into popular favour and his ‘Daniel Deronda’(1876) is regarded as her greatest book.

During all they ever of literary success her husband Lewies had been a most sympathetic friend and critic and when he died in 1878,the loss seemed to be more than she called bear. Her letters of this period are touching in their loneliners and their carving her sympathy, Later she astonished everybody by murrying John Walter cross her biographer. She died in December of same year in 1880.

Works of George Eliot   

    

          His works are conveniently divided into three groups, Corresponding to the three period of her life. The First Group includes her early essays and miscellaneous work, from her translation of Strauss’s Leben Yesu, in 1846, to her union with Lewes in 1854. The Second Group include ‘Scenes of clerical Life,’ ‘Adam Bede’, ‘Mill on the floss’, and ‘Silas Marner.’ All published between 1858 and 1861. These four novels of the middle period are found on the author’s own life and experience. They are probably the author’s most enduring works and they show rapid development of literary power which reaches a climax in Silas Marner

The novel of ‘Italian life Romola (1862-63) belongs to the Third Group, which include three novels – ‘Felix Holt (1866)’, ‘Middlemarch (1871-72)’,            ‘Daniel Deronda (1876). The ambitious dramatic poem ‘The Spanish Gypsy’ (1868) and collection of miscallceneous essays called ‘ The Impressions of Theophrastus such (1879)’. Daniel Deronda is the highest expression of the author’s geniues.

George Eliot’s first stories are in some respect her best. In the groups of novel Adam Bede is the most natural and probably interests more readers than all the others combined. The Mill on the Floss has a larger personal interest because it reflect much of Eliot’s history and the scenes & friends of her early life. Silas Marner is artistically the most perfect of her novels. Romola has the same general moral theme as the English novels. But the scene are entirely different. In a word, Romola is a Great moral study is a very interesting book.

To sum up , 

Thus, In Victorian Age Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Mary Ann Evans / George Eliot are very dominated figure. And their contribution are unique and very important in our literature.