Writers through the centuries - 19th Century

episode 8

The 19th century born authors will stretch their publishing dates and tremendous influence with their books across both the 19th and 20th century. This two centuries are maybe the most prolific period of world literature we have to date. A century is still mainly dominated by British and French authors. We have some amazing authors coming from the US and Russia, which will only bring even more literary enrichment to the bookcases of all avid readers in love with the written word, literature.

There are at least 40 grand authors that any passionate reader would remember, and most of our defining classic books come from authors born in this period.

The 19th century saw multiple literary movements that often times overlapped one another.

Life conditions were getting better and better. The industrial revolution brought so much wealth to countries, an improvement in work conditions that meant people now had the time to think more of their feelings and see if the labour were something they would feel good sentiments towards. It increased the proportion of the middle class. A middle class that began to be better educated increased their cultural status and consequentially now had a rising desire for reading. Literature became to manifest its appeal not just for the rich but also to the upper-middle class and eventually for all the middle social segment.

The first steam locomotive, electric engine and oil refinery are just some of the significant technological tremendous leap advances. The nationalism ideology starts to emerge (especially towards the end of the century), and the decline of the Ottoman empire, with the increasing importance of the British, German (that replaces the Holy Roman Empire) and the Russian Empires, all start to take form and shape on all aspects of 19th-century life. All of this rapid, life-shaping changes took their influence in literature as well.

At its core, Romanticism was a counter-movement to the whole industrial revolution that turned humans into labour machines. The desire not to lose their inner sense was met by the romantic and realism movement.

Romantic literature is an age of beauty, of sensibility, coming as a reaction to the self-labelled humanist Age of Enlightenment, the all too mechanical philosophical way of thinking, where a lot of ideas were tossed into the air and although titled as humanist principles, they were actually losing our very own humanity: the sentiments.

It is as a reaction to this, as a reaction to Voltaire’s, Jean Jacque Rousseau or even Moliere absurd generalization of humans being just as intellectual processors (similar to a robotic computer), forgetting that we humans are defined by feelings, emotions and sentiments. Romanticism and realism literary movements are the most significant academic and cultural movement in human history: The romantic era.

Romanticism in literature, arts, and music is mainly taking the whole of the 19th century. For literature, it is a span between 1800 and 1890. In the same century, we have another fantastic literature movement: Realism (1848 -1900) that believed things need to be depicted as they are: adverse, cold, and blunt without unrequired beautification, but still appealing to the human factor in it, and of course the naturalism (1860 to 1910) that included in the whole schema the importance of Nature, natural events that can influence the plot and development of the book characters.

Naturalism is an outgrown realism. If realism describes things as they are (rationally objective, human at the centre), naturalism will present the background's forces, natural forces that shape and influence actions. Naturalism will be pessimistic and involve: poverty, racism, prejudice, disease, corruption, prostitution, and human vice.

All three came overlapping with the Victorian literature (1837-1900), mainly an English literature period, overlapping Queen Victoria rule's time frame. However, a similar style can be seen outside of the British isles in American literature.

Romantic authors like V.Hugo, Walter Scott, Jane Austen, H.Wallpole, M.Shelley, Al. Dumas, Goethe are succeeded by H.de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Anton Chekov, Leo Tolstoy, or Emile Zola.

That is the beginning of the 19th century. Authors born in this apex for literature came to influence notably and positively 19th-century literature and the beginning of the 20th century till the second world war. Its effect started to diminish only after the end of this second world, and the conflagration was catastrophic to our cultural lives, among other aspects.

An era defined in English literature by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy (Tess of the d’Urbervilles 1891) or Emily Bronte and her fabulous gothic romantic novel: Wuthering heights (1847) and her sister Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre 1847).

Children literature is also introduced more vividly by writers like Lewis Carroll (Alice in wonderland). This is done because children from the lower economic status in the Victorian era are not forced to perform hard labour anymore. As such, the idea of childhood is introduced. Children now have the time to read: fairy tales, folk-inspired stories, fables. Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island 1883; Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 1886) is a good example that was regarded as someone who wrote for both adults and children.

The victorian era in literature can be found even outside of England. Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1852) is an excellent example of an American writer who created Victorian era literature outside Britain.

Classic romantic music. The two styles of classical and romantic music almost intertwine to a perfect symbiosis. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Christian Bach composers in the classical music period, contemporary with composers on both classical and romantic: Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven.

Or just romantic period music composers like: Frederic Chopin, Gioachino Rossini, Niccolo Paganini. Later romantic composers were: Johannes Brahms, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Antonin Dvorak, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss, Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, and Georges Bizet.

A period that would be continued with another vital success story of literature: Edwardian literature (1901-1914), with authors like Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker.

There will be almost 40 authors described in the next episodes. So please buckle up and enjoy the ride for the world literature century extraordinaire. The 19th century born authors still offer us a high example of what best literature, regardless of whether it is categorised as Romantic, Realistic, or Victorian—the best century for the written word, which hopefully will repeat itself soon.

The following episodes of fantastic authors will look for the life story of Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Hans Christian Andersen, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville;

Charlotte Bronte; Emily Bronte; Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Carlo Collodi, Jules Verne, Leo Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson);

Mark Twain, Thomas Hardy, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant, Howard Pyle;

Oscar Wilde, Lyman Frank Baum, Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlof, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Herbert George Wells;

Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Jack London, James Joyce, Franz Kafka;

Agatha Christie, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, F. Scott Fitzgerald, C.S. Lewis, Ernest Hemingway.

Hope you will enjoy discovering the life of these titans of literature, from which we can learn so much.

Nihil sine Deo