Victorian fiction
Nineteenth-century British novels
Victorian fiction refers to novels and short stories written during Queen Victoria's reign (1837–1901), a period of remarkable literary output in Britain.
The era produced Dickens, the Brontës, Eliot, Hardy, and Thackeray, among others.
Victorian novels tend toward length, social commentary, moral earnestness, and intricate plots: She's working through the Victorian fiction canon.
The term sometimes carries connotations of verbosity or sentimentality.
- orphan heroHeroic figure without parents
- penny dreadfulCheap Victorian crime serial
- moralityRight and wrong principles
- moral lessonEthical teaching from narrative
- serialized storytellingNarrative published in installments
Charles Dickens · Charlotte Brontë · George Eliot · marriage plot · fallen woman · Emily Brontë · industrial revolution · melodrama · deathbed scene · social reform · Thomas Hardy · Oscar Wilde · gaslight · London fog · vivid descriptions · drawing room · fog · class struggle
- historicalperiod drama, war novels, biographies, memoirs, chronicles
- European literatureAnna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, Don Quixote, Dracula, Frankenstein
- Novel Historynovels, novellas, historical novel, historical novels, bildungsroman
- setting fictionurban fantasy, westerns, space opera, cyberpunk, steampunk
- Colonial LiteratureHeart of Darkness, Kim, The Jungle Book, King Solomon's Mines, Robinson Crusoe
- domestic fictionfamily drama, family saga, home life, family secrets, family dysfunction
Victorian fictionmodernist fiction
Experimental early 20th-century prose
postmodern fiction · experimental fiction · contemporary fiction · medieval romance · ancient literature
Victorian fictionstream of consciousness
Narrative mimicking uninterrupted thought
fragmented narrative · metafiction · experimental fiction · postmodern fiction · nonlinear narrative
Victorian, fiction, Victoria, victor, victory, victories, victorious, victoriously, fictive