Literature Essay ⋆ History Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

During the period 1750–1900, a large increase in literacy and reduced costs in printing and publishing led to large numbers of books being published. This in turn resulted in the establishment of public and private libraries around the world, which led to even more people having access to these books. The introduction of better house lighting, leading up to electric lights, also created a very favorable environment for reading.

In Britain the literary style was changing from the Augustan age, which had been seen through the works of Joseph Addison, Daniel Defoe, Sir Richard Steele, and Jonathan Swift. Henry Fielding (1707–54) wrote his last novel, Amelia (1751), shortly before going to Lisbon, Portugal, where he died. With the Augustan representing what was seen as the golden age of Rome, it was the period when the Grand Tour started. This idea encouraged wealthy young Britons to travel around Europe seeing the famous sites. With the emergence of Britain as a world power after the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), British dominance of North America and the Caribbean was assured, and France seemed unlikely to pose a challenge to the British for some time to come. The emergence of the British Empire in Africa and India was also leading to increased wealth and the encouragement of the expeditions that took place in the latter decades of the 18th century. Within the reading public there was a great demand for travel literature, with the books by Captain James Cook (1728–79) and Admiral William Bligh (1754–1817), among others, selling well in Britain. Books by French, German, and other explorers and travelers were also translated into numbers of languages, further fueling the curiosity of readers.

By the time Bligh’s account of the mutiny on the Bounty was on sale, the euphoria from the Seven Years’ War had died down, Britain having lost many of the American colonies with its defeat in the American Revolution. Important writers during this period include the philosopher David Hume (1711–76), novelist Laurence Sterne (1713–68), and Horace Walpole (1717–97). The economist Adam Smith (1723–90) was author of the best-seller The Wealth of Nations (1776), with philosophical works by John Stuart Mill (1806– 73) also being popular. Mention must also be made of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns (1759–96), and Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709–84) and his biographer James Boswell (1740–95).

The 1780s and 1790s became known as the romantic period, with the emergence of the Lake Poets.

William Wordsworth (1770–1850), composer of The Prelude; Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834); and poet and writer Robert Southey (1774–1843) brought with them both the views of the European Enlightenment, along with a reaction against the industrial revolution and urbanism. Wordsworth also explored nature, and in 1798 the first nature writer in the modern tradition, Gilbert White, published his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. The late 1790s and early 1800s were largely a period of isolation and introspection for British literature, with Britons not able to embark on their Grand Tour anymore, owing to the Napoleonic Wars, although some did manage brief visits in the period just after the signing of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. Two other authors who sold many copies of their books include Thomas Paine (1737– 1809), author of The Rights of Man (1791–92), and his great adversary, Edmund Burke (1729–97), author of Reflections on the French Revolution (1790), which was read all over Europe.

Many of the other writers of the period, such as Jane Austen (1775–1817), author of Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813), set all their work in England. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), author of The Lady of the Lake (1810), Ivanhoe (1819), and The Talisman (1825), wrote a very large number of works of fiction, poetry, history, drama, and essays. His Waverley novels were usually set around Scottish historical and folkloric themes, and this vast output essentially represented the introduction of the historical novel to a large reading public. This was followed by hugely popular but now largely forgotten historical novelist W. H. Ainsworth (1805–82).

Toward the end of the Napoleonic Wars, there was a second generation of romantic poets that included Lord Byron (1788–1824); Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792– 1822), author of Prometheus Unbound (1818–19); and John Keats (1795–1821). All heavily influenced by Wordsworth and the other Lake Poets, Byron’s poetry was clearly influenced by his time in Europe, which would have been impossible a decade earlier. Indeed Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, one of Byron’s most famous poems, was about a young man’s adventures on the European continent.

Having to flee England after allegations surfaced of his incestuous affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh, Byron met Shelley and his wife, Mary Shelley, at Geneva, Switzerland. They collaborated, and there are certainly some similarities between the poetry of Byron and Shelley, two free thinkers whose lives had scandalized many in Britain. Byron was later to take up the cause of Greek independence, which resulted in his death in 1824.

The next great breakthrough in English literature is the Victorian era, when the British Empire and its power and influence dominated much of the world, developing much of the new technology and initiating social reforms. This brought forth an avalanche of literary talent, the work of Charles Dickens (1812–70) being perhaps the most memorable. Famous British writers of the period include Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë; Samuel Butler (1835–1902), author of The Way of All Flesh, published posthumously in 1903; Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), author of The French Revolution (1837) and Sartor Resartus (1833–34); Wilkie Collins (1824–89), author of The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), which T. S. Eliot called “the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels”; Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), creator of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson; Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857–1924), author of Lord Jim (1900); Charles Dickens (1812–70), author of Oliver Twist (1837–39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41), David Copperfield (1849–50), Bleak House (1852–53), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1860–61); George Eliot (pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans, 1819–80), author of The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Middlemarch (1871–72); Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), author of The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and Jude the Obscure (1896); Thomas Hughes (1822–96), author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1856); Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), author of Barrack Room Ballads (1892), The Seven Seas (1896), and the two Jungle Books (1894–95); Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94), author of Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886); William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63), author of Henry Esmond (1852); and Anthony Trollope (1815–82), author of Barchester Towers (1857) and many other works.

Several other popular Victorian writers include poet and engraver William Blake (1757–1827), Elizabeth Browning (1806–61) and Robert Browning (1812–89), playwright John Drinkwater (1882–1937), best-selling boys’ adventure writer and journalist G. A. Henty (1832–1902), poet and craftsman William Morris (1834–96), poet Alexander Pope (1677–1744), and Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92).

There were also an increasing number of books about foreign countries and lands. Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826) wrote of his time in Java, and books on Africa by explorers such as Dr. David Livingstone (1813–73) and H. M. Stanley (1841–1904) interested many people in central Africa. Quite a number of these books sold within days of their release, with On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859), by Charles Darwin (1809–82), selling out on its first day.

Following the creation of the United States, there was the emergence of a new literary trend, also written in English but firmly with its own accent and eye. Again, like this period in Britain, there was a rich mix of fiction, drama, adventure, history, and science.

Important American writers included Stephen Crane (1871–1900), author of the Civil War story The Red Badge of Courage (1893); philosopher and statesman Benjamin Franklin (1706–90); Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908), creator of Brer Rabbit and author of Uncle Remus; Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64); Herman Melville (1819–91), author of Moby-Dick (1851); novelist Francis Parkman (1823–93), author of The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and RockyMountain Life (1849); Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811– 96), author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852); essayist and poet Henry David Thoreau (1817–62); and poet Walt Whitman (1819–92). Historian William H. Prescott (1796–1859) produced America’s first “scientific histories,” being the author of The History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) and History of the Conquest of Peru (1847).

Australia, despite its size, had a small population. Because of its unique history, it developed a different literary tradition, with important Australian writers including Marcus Clarke (1846–81), author of His Natural Life (1874, subsequently reissued as For the term of your natural life); Rolf Boldrewood (pseudonym for Thomas Alexander Browne, 1826–1915), author of The Squatter’s Dream (1875) and Robbery Under Arms (1888); and W. H. Fitchett (1841–1928), author of many books on the British Empire.

In other languages, again with the increase of literacy levels, new printing techniques, and the availability of cheap paper and newspapers, there was a vast output of literature. France enjoyed one of its greatest periods of cultural progress. The early work from the 1750s was heavily influenced by the Enlightenment. The major French work of this period was the Encyclopédie of Denis Didreot and Jean d’Alembert, published between 1751 and 1765. Many French writers of this period were heavily influenced by French historical themes, especially the Napoleonic Wars and earlier conflicts. Alexandre Dumas (1803–70) set his The Man in the Iron Mask during the reign of Louis XIV, and his The Count of Monte Cristo covered events that followed a brief visit a ship made to the island of Elba. Victor Hugo (1802–85) became famous for his Les Misérables (1862), still known around the world by its French title. Hugo became interested in the history of Notre-Dame Cathedral, and his The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) raised much awareness of the cathedral’s medieval history.

Other French writers of the period include Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), author of Father Goriot, among many others; Charles Baudelaire (1821–67); Gustave Flaubert (1821–80), author of Madame Bovary (1857); George Sand (pseudonym of Armandine-Aurore-Lucile Dudevant, 1804–76); Stendhal (pseudonym for MarieHenri Beyle, 1783–1842) author of The Red and the Black (1831) and The Charterhouse of Parma (1839); Hippolyte Taine (1828–93), who wrote The Origins of Contemporary France (1875–1894), an attack on the French revolutionaries; Jules Verne (1828–1905), author of Journey to the Center of the World (1864) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873); and Emile Zola (1840–1902), author of Germinal (1885). There were also important philosophical works by Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778) and Montesquieu (1689–1755).

Germany was, in some ways, very different, largely owing to the legacy of the Napoleonic Wars, and its fragmentation until 1871. The importance of German literature was assured by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–32), author of Faust (1808–32), who introduced the world to a mind and talent that remains unique. There was also a particularly important contribution to the world of philosophy, politics, drama, and poetry. Important writers of the period include poet and essayist Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Immanuel Kant (1724– 1804), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), and Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). Mention should also be made of Karl Marx (1818–83), who moved from Germany to England and was author of The Communist Manifesto (1848), Das Kapital (1867–94) and the founder of communism.

This was also one of the major eras in Russian literature, with famous writers of this period including playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), author of The Seagull (1896); Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81), author of Crime and Punishment (1866) and the Brothers Karamazov (1879–80); Nikolay Gogol (1809–52, author of The Inspector General (1836); Maxim Gorky (pseudonym for Alexey Peshkov, 1868–1936); Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799–1837); and Count Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), author of War and Peace (1865–69), and Anna Karenina (1873–77). From Scandinavia during this period came the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) and the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg (1849–1912).

Outside Europe and the Americas, there were significant changes in literary traditions. The spread of European languages by way of travelers, missionaries, occupying armies, and the arrival of commercial organizations furthered the familiarity with English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian. Some gifted students, talented individuals, and the well-to-do found their way to London, Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Rome—and then returned to their homelands hugely influenced, not always sympathetically, by their experiences. Those who were to make literature their life’s work often wrote in their native tongue, but, for the most part, adopting styles that their sojourns had introduced them to.

In India some prominent names are C. Subrahmanya Bharati (1882–1921), the outstanding Tamil poet; B. C. Chatterji (1838–94), a Bengali novelist described as the “first master of the true novel in India” with Rajmohan’s wife (1864); Toru Dutt (1856–77), poet, essayist, and musician. In the Malay world the literary tradition involved hikayats, sagas recited by wise men, sometimes recorded. The first of these published in the West was the Hikayat Abdullah of Abdullah Munshi bin Abdul Kadir, secretary to Raffles, and which includes an account, albeit secondhand, of the founding of Singapore; with another important one being the Tuhfat al-Nafis, which was begun in 1865 but not published until 1932 when an edition was published in Singapore.

In Vietnam the greatest writer of the period was Nguyen Du (1765–1820), the creator of Kim Van Kieu, a verse novel, that has come to be regarded as Vietnam’s national poem. Writing in Tagalog, the language of central Luzon in the Philippines, Francisco Balagtas (1788–1862) was regarded as the “prince of Tagalog poets”—Tagalog literature had already been highly developed.

Japan saw a flourishing of literature with writers such as the novelist Ichiyo Higuchi (1872–96) and Futabatei Shimei (1864–1909). China had a tradition of literature stretching back 2,000 years and was easily able to adapt to include novels, a genre known in the country since the 14th century, with Liu E (1857–1909) writing the Travels of Lao Ts’an (c. 1904–07), and Chou Shu-jen (Lu Hsun) (1881–1936) who became regarded by many as the most important literary figure in modern China. Also in China, teams of historians under the Manchu Qing (Ch’ing) dynasty compiled vast histories, collecting and collating earlier works and historical traditions. In fact it was also a period, during the 1750s, when the Manchu script was gaining wider acceptance. There are also court chronicles in most Asian countries, with those in Mughal India, Cambodia, Korea, Thailand (from the 1780s), and Vietnam still surviving. The arrival of Europeans in many parts of the world led to some of these works being bought and taken to European and American libraries, where translations of extracts were published, along with the recording and publishing of many literary works that had been told orally.

Bibliography:

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. London: B.T. Batsford, 1990;
Carpenter, Humphrey, and Mari Prichard, eds. The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995;
Drabble, Margaret. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987;
Pynsent, R. B. and S. Kanikova, eds. The Everyman Companion to East European Literature. London: J.M. Dent, 1993;
Welch, Robert, ed. The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996;
Wilde, William H., Joy Hooton, and Barry Andrews, eds. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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