The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1830–1914

The nineteenth century witnessed unprecedented expansion in thereading public and an explosive growth in the number of books andnewspapers produced to meet its demands. These speciallycommissioned essays examine not only the full range and variety oftexts that entertained and informed the Victorians, but also theboundaries of Victorian literature: the links and overlap withRomanticism in the 1830s, and the roots of modernism in the yearsleading up to the First World War. The Companion demonstrates howscience, medicine and theology influenced creative writing andemphasizes the importance of the visual in painting, bookillustration and in technological innovations from the kaleidoscopeto the cinema. Essays also chart the complex and fruitfulinterchanges with writers in America, Europe and the Empire,highlighting the geographical expansion of literature in English.This Companion brings together the most important aspects of thisprolific and popular period of English literature.