Victorian novel
Nineteenth-century British literature
A Victorian novel is a work of long fiction written during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), typically characterized by social realism, moral concerns, and elaborate plotting.
The term evokes Dickens, the Brontës, George Eliot, and their contemporaries.
Victorian novels often appeared as serialized installments before book publication: She's working through the Victorian novel canon this summer.
- orphan heroHeroic figure without parents
- penny dreadfulCheap Victorian crime serial
- George EliotPseudonymous Victorian novelist
- realismAccepting things as they are
- serializationEncoding objects for transmission
Charles Dickens · bildungsroman · marriage plot · Thomas Hardy · country house · British Empire · Charlotte Brontë · Emily Brontë · Industrial Revolution · London fog · sentimentalism · deathbed scene · fallen woman · social hierarchy · melodrama · colonialism · urbanization · social class
- English LiteratureShakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen, Bronte, Chaucer
- historical fictionhistorical fiction, period drama, historical mystery, biographical fiction, costume drama
- narrativesshort story, memoir, fable, tale, folktale
- 19th century literatureshort story, realism, Dickens, Austen, Tolstoy
- Victorian literatureDickens, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Eliot, Thomas Hardy
- Gothic LiteratureEdgar Allan Poe, Jane Eyre, Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights, The Tell-Tale Heart
Victorian novelexperimental novel
Unconventional narrative prose work
experimental fiction · metafiction · fragmented narrative · medieval romance
Victorian novelflash fiction
Ultra-short story genre
microfiction · short story · vignette · prose poem · sketch
Victorian novelfragmented narrative
Story lacking chronological order
nonlinear narrative · metafiction · anti-novel · Ulysses · Finnegans Wake
Victorian, novel, Victoria, Victorians, Victorianism, novels, novelist, novelists, novella