The Age of Tennyson

A compact critical survey defines the 1830–1870 literary period and traces its major movements and figures, from the intellectual reaction against revolutionary romanticism to the rise of analytic, truth-seeking modes in poetry and prose. It treats leading poets and the Pre-Raphaelite influence, the development of fiction from early novelists to Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot, and examines historians, theologians, philosophers and scientists such as Carlyle, Macaulay, Mill and Darwin. Chapters consider criticism, scholarship, and miscellany, emphasize evolving social and scientific contexts, and close with sketches of later work that signal a transition to new literary ambitions.