What are the salient features of the Victorian Age in English literature?

Because the
Victorian Era covers so many years,
1830 - 1900, it is usually broken down into the early
Victorian,
mid-Victorian, and late Victorian, each of which displays its own
characteristics.
With the rapid industrialization taking place during the
years 1830 - 1850, early Victorian
works are characterized by attention to
social issues such as child labor and poverty.
Representative works include
the heart-rending "The Cry of the Children" by Elizabeth
Barrett Browning and
the beloved novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. To

the credit of private and public figures of that time, including Queen Victoria herself,
real
progress was made on many of those issues.

This
progress led to a period in
the middle of the century when the British Empire
blossomed and pride in the national identity
peaked, represented by Prince
Albert's Great Exhibition of 1851. George Eliot wrote novels of
moral decency
and brilliant psychological ; Alfred Lord Tennyson, who became poet laureate
in
1850, wrote wonderful lyric poetry, his famous "In Memoriam," and
patriotic verses
such as "The Charge of the Light Brigade." The
Pre-Raphaelites celebrated beauty in
language and visual arts, contributing
to the mid-Victorian heyday of literary
achievement.

The
later years of the Victorian Era saw a tendency toward the
deconstruction of
Victorian values. Playwrights Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw were each cleverly

iconoclastic in their own ways, satirizing the shortcomings of their society in plays
such as
The Importance of Being Earnest and
Mrs. Warren's
Profession. Robert Louis Stevenson's
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde also pointed
out the hypocrisy of those who would live dual lives in a
surprising
detective type story with a Gothic twist. In poetry, Robert Browning's
fascinating
dramatic monologues foreshadowed the 20th century's use of the
natural rhythms of speech over
the strict metrical arrangements of
traditional poetry. 

In general,
Victorian literature
represents a zenith of English language literary achievement in terms of
the
beauty of its language and thought, reflecting traditional values and using
time-tested
literary forms to express its themes. The later years of the
period began to show more
disillusionment and doubt, which would become
full-blown in the 20th
century. 

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