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      What the metrical romance was to the Middlepages, what the drama was to the age of Elizabeth, the novel was to the age of Victoria, in this period, all forms of literature continued to flourish and the total number of books published increased rapidly as education was extended and readinf public was multiplied, but the rate of the growth of the novel far supaassed all the other kinds.

 

     A. early Victorian novelists

William Make peace Thankeray was born in 1811, Charles Dickens in 1812, Charlotte Bronte in 1816, Emily Bronte in 1818, George Eliot in 1819.

Vanity Fair (浮華世界)---Thankeray / Jane Eyre---Charlotte Bronte / Wughering Heights---Emily Bronte

These are the names which first come to our mind when we think of the Victorian novelists, and we classify them as the early Victorian novelists.

The later Victorian novelists include George Meredith who was born in 1828, his masterpeice is "Egoist."  Samuel Butler was born in 1835, his masterpeice is "The Way of All Flesh(眾生之道)."  Thmas Hardy was born in 1840.

 

     The early Victorian novelists wrote under a special climate of ideas and feelings, they were one with the reading public to quite a remarkable degree; they were conditioned by it. THey identified themselves with their age; they were its spokesmen.  The late Victorian novelists wrote against thir age; they were critical, and even hostile. Their relation to the reading public was nearer to the 20th century than to the Victorian Age.

 

     The Victorian novel was a realistic penetration of life.  In this age of concern over the problems of greater number of people, the realistic novel came to be a vehicle of social betterment.

     The novelists wrote with a definite social purpose. They took up the novel of manners from Jane Austen and gave it a wider scope, and this is known to us as the"novel of purpose" or "purpose novel" or "problem novel." So, the Victorian novel served not only as a literary enterainment, but also a medium for influencing opinion.