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In [[1863]] [[Jules Verne]] published ''[[Cinq semaines en ballon]]'' (''[[Five Weeks in a Balloon]]''). (Verne's ''Paris au XXe siècle'' (''Paris in the 20th Century'') was written, but was not published until [[1994]]). ''Voyage au centre de la Terre'' (''[[Journey to the Center of the Earth]]'') came out in [[1864]] and ''[[De la Terre à la Lune]]'' (''[[From the Earth to the Moon]]'') in [[1865]]. Verne had by then fully established the ''"[[scientific romance]]"'' as a genre. Charles Dickens published ''[[Our Mutual Friend]]'' in installments from [[1864]] to [[1865]]. Literature by this time was becoming increasingly popular. The European and North American middle-classes were better educated than ever before and more reading was done. At the same time the styles of writing were tending more and more toward plainer language and more broadly understood themes. People were reading about detectives, ghosts, machines, wonders, adventures, tricky situations, unusual turns of fate and romances. Love stories and grudges, explorations and wars, ideas based on scientific [[positivism]] and ideas based on [[nonsense]] and [[gibberish]] were all being published and enjoyed by a readership which could now be termed ''"the masses"''. In [[1863]] [[Jules Verne]] published ''[[Cinq semaines en ballon]]'' (''[[Five Weeks in a Balloon]]''). (Verne's ''Paris au XXe siècle'' (''Paris in the 20th Century'') was written, but was not published until [[1994]]). ''Voyage au centre de la Terre'' (''[[Journey to the Center of the Earth]]'') came out in [[1864]] and ''[[De la Terre à la Lune]]'' (''[[From the Earth to the Moon]]'') in [[1865]]. Verne had by then fully established the ''"[[scientific romance]]"'' as a genre. Charles Dickens published ''[[Our Mutual Friend]]'' in installments from [[1864]] to [[1865]]. Literature by this time was becoming increasingly popular. The European and North American middle-classes were better educated than ever before and more reading was done. At the same time the styles of writing were tending more and more toward plainer language and more broadly understood themes. People were reading about detectives, ghosts, machines, wonders, adventures, tricky situations, unusual turns of fate and romances. Love stories and grudges, explorations and wars, ideas based on scientific [[positivism]] and ideas based on [[nonsense]] and [[gibberish]] were all being published and enjoyed by a readership which could now be termed ''"the masses"''.

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Notes on 19th century in literature terminology, French literature of the 19th century, Russian literature of the 19th century

The 19th century was perhaps the most literary of all centuries, because not only were the forms of novel, short story and magazine serial all in existence side-by-side with theatre and opera, but since film, radio and television did not yet exist, the popularity of the written word and its direct enactment were at their height. See wood pulp and literacy.

Contents

Trends

Romanticism - Decadent movement - Naturalism - Realism - French 19th century literature - Symbolist literature


Titles

The Crimes of Love (1800) - The Devil's Elixir (1815/16) - The Sandman (1817) - Frankenstein (1818) - Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) - The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) - Le Rouge et le Noir (1831) - Gamiani (1833 - Viy (1835) - Histoires extraordinaires (1840s) - Bartleby the Scrivener (1853) - Les Fleurs du mal (1857) - Madame Bovary (1857) - On Wine and Hashish (1851) - Artificial Paradises (1860) - Salammbô (1862) - The Painter of Modern Life (1863) - Notes from Underground (1864) - Le Spleen de Paris (1869) - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) - Venus in Furs (1870) - Carmilla (1872) - The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874) - Les Diaboliques (The She-Devils) (1874) - Anna Karenina (1877) - Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1877) - Flatland (1884) - À rebours (1884) - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) - Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) - The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) - La Bête humaine (1890) - Hunger (1890) - New Grub Street (1891) - The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) - Jude the Obscure (1895) - The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) - Dracula (1897) - The She Devils (1898) - Torture Garden (1899)

The 19th century and the Novel as the object of great Discussions

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the novel had been a genre of realism fighting the romance with its wild fantasies. The novel had turned first to scandal before undergoing reform over the last decades of the eighteenth century. Fiction eventually became the most honourable field of literature. This development culminated in a wave of novels of fantasy at the turn of the nineteenth century. Sensibility was heightened in these novels. Women, overwrought and prone to imagining worlds beyond their appointed one, became the heroines of the new world of "romances" and "gothic novels" creating stories in distant times and places. Renaissance Italy was a favorite setting of the gothic novel.

The classic gothic novel is Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). As in other gothic novels, the notion of the sublime is central. Eighteenth-century aesthetic theory held that the sublime and the beautiful were juxtaposed. The sublime was awful (literally, "awe-inspiring") and terrifying while the beautiful was calm and reassuring. Gothic characters and landscapes rest almost entirely within the sublime, with the heroine the great exception. The "beautiful" heroine's susceptibility to supernatural elements, integral to these novels, both celebrates and problematizes what came to be seen as hypersensibility.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the overwrought emotions of sensibility, as expressed through the gothic sublime, had run their course. Jane Austen with Northanger Abbey (1803) parodied the gothic novel, reflecting its death. Moreover, while sensibility did not disappear, it was less valued. Austen introduced a different style of writing, the "comedy of manners". Her novels often are not only funny, and particularly likely to satirize individuals of high social status, but they also display a wariness of city influences which are often portrayed as having a tendency to corrupt established social values. Her best known novel, Pride and Prejudice (1811), is her happiest, and has been a blueprint for much subsequent romantic fiction. Austen's novels still retain a wide following, despite the distance between their heroines' dilemmas and those of the reader today.

Russian literature

The 19th century is traditionally referred to as the "Golden Age" of Russian literature. Romanticism permitted a flowering of especially poetic talent: the names of Zhukovsky and Aleksandr Pushkin came to the fore, followed by Mikhail Lermontov and Fyodor Tyutchev.

Nineteenth-century developments included Ivan Krylov the fabulist; non-fiction writers such as Belinsky and Herzen; playwrights such as Griboedov and Ostrovsky; poets such as Evgeny Baratynsky, Konstantin Batyushkov, Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Fyodor Tyutchev, and Afanasij Fet; Kozma Prutkov (a collective pen name) the satirist; and a group of widely recognised novelists such as Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leskov, Ivan Turgenev, Saltykov-Shchedrin and Goncharov.

The influence of Pushkin cannot be overstated. He is credited with both crystalizing the literary Russian language and introducing a new level of artistry to Russian literature. His best-known work is a novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. In the field of the novel, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in particular were titanic figures, and have remained internationally renowned, to the point that many scholars have described one or the other as the greatest novelist ever.

Realism in French 19th century literature

See Realism in French literature of the 19th century

The late 19th century

Late 19th century in literature

In 1863 Jules Verne published Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon). (Verne's Paris au XXe siècle (Paris in the 20th Century) was written, but was not published until 1994). Voyage au centre de la Terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth) came out in 1864 and De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon) in 1865. Verne had by then fully established the "scientific romance" as a genre. Charles Dickens published Our Mutual Friend in installments from 1864 to 1865. Literature by this time was becoming increasingly popular. The European and North American middle-classes were better educated than ever before and more reading was done. At the same time the styles of writing were tending more and more toward plainer language and more broadly understood themes. People were reading about detectives, ghosts, machines, wonders, adventures, tricky situations, unusual turns of fate and romances. Love stories and grudges, explorations and wars, ideas based on scientific positivism and ideas based on nonsense and gibberish were all being published and enjoyed by a readership which could now be termed "the masses".

In 1864 Nathaniel Hawthorne died. Dostoyevski published Notes from Underground (or Letters from the Underworld). Dostoyevski's concerns and style were singularly original and allow the reader entry to a claustrophobic interior world of the psyche. It is probably correct to describe Dostoyevski as the first Existentialist author.

In 1865 Lewis Carroll published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, combining social satire with nonsense writing and presenting the two of them in the guise of a children's story. Thomas Chandler Haliburton died. Edith Maude Eaton was born.

1866 Dostoyevski published Crime and Punishment, followed by The Gambler (1867). Mark Twain published The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

Jules Verne published Les enfants du Capitaine Grant (In Search of the Castaways) 1867-1868 and Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) in 1870.

In 1868 Dostoyevski published The Idiot.

In 1869 Mark Twain published Innocents Abroad. Matthew Arnold set a cultural agenda in his book Culture and Anarchy. His views represented one of two polar opposites which would be in struggle against each other for many years to come. The other side of the struggle would be represented by the Aesthetic, Symbolist or Decadent movement. The chief participants in the cultural opposition at this time included, on the so-called decadent side French poets like Jean Moréas, Paul Verlaine, Tristan Corbière, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and, in Britain, the Irish writer Oscar Wilde. On the other side were Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin and the tendency amongst the arts toward a utilitarian, constructive and educational ethic. The views of Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin inspired the Arts and Crafts movement and William Morris. This dispute (art for art's sake versus art for the common good) would continue throughout the remainder of the 19th century and much of the 20th.

The Decadent movement was a transitional stage between romanticism and modernism.

In 1870 Charles Dickens died aged 58. Before his death he was working on The Mystery of Edwin Drood (published unfinished). John McCrae was born. Hilaire Belloc was born (27 July).

In 1872 Dostoyevski published The Possessed (or Demons or The Devils). Lewis Carroll published Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice Found There. Samuel Butler published Erewhon, an early science fiction novel. Jules Verne published Le tour du monde en quatre-vingt jours (Around the World in Eighty Days).

In 1873 Alfred Jarry was born (8 September).

In 1874 Jules Verne published L'île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island).

In 1875 Carmen, a French opera by Georges Bizet, with text by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, reached the stage. Dostoyevski published The Raw Youth (or The Adolescent).

In 1876 Lewis Carroll published The Hunting of the Snark. Mark Twain published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

In 1878 Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta HMS Pinafore, or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor was staged.

In 1879 Octave Crémazie died. Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance, or, The Slave of Duty was staged.

In 1880 Dostoyevski published The Brothers Karamazov.

In 1881 Dostoyevski died. Oscar Wilde published his first book of poems . Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Patience, or, Bunthorne's Bride was staged. Mark Twain published The Prince and the Pauper.

In 1882 Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Iolanthe, or, The Peer and the Peri was staged. Ralph Waldo Emerson died. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died. Two of America's finest poets gone in one year.

In 1883 Wilhelm Richard Wagner died 13 February. Franz Kafka was born 3 July.

In1884 Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas Princess Ida, or, Castle Adamant (1884) and The Mikado, or, The Town of Titipu (1885) arrive on the London stage.

In 1885 H. Rider Haggard published King Solomon's Mines.

In 1886 Emily Dickinson died.

In 1887 Oscar Wilde published The Canterville Ghost. Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Ruddigore, or, The Witch's Curse was staged. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story and the beginning of crime fiction as a genre. H. Rider Haggard published She first serialized in The Graphic from October 1886 to January 1887.

In 1888 Oscar Wilde published The Happy Prince and Other Stories. Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Yeomen of the Guard, or, The Merryman and his Maid was staged.

Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas The Gondoliers, or, The King of Barataria (1889), Utopia, Limited, or, The Flowers of Progress (1893) and The Grand Duke, or, The Statutory Duel (1896) were all staged.

Lewis Carroll's last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, was published in 1889 and 1893 respectively. In 1889 Oscar Wilde published The Portrait of Mr. W. H..

In 1890 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The Sign of Four. H. Rider Haggard published The Saga of Eric Brighteyes an epic viking novel. Oscar Wilde published The Picture of Dorian Gray.

In 1891 Herman Melville died. Oscar Wilde published Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime and other Stories, Intentions and House of Pomegranates.

In 1892 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

In 1893 Oscar Wilde staged two plays: Salomé (French version) and Lady Windermere's Fan. His A Woman of No Importance and the English version of Salomé followed in 1894.

In 1894 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Robert Louis Stevenson died 3 December. Mark Twain published Tom Sawyer Abroad and Pudd'n'head Wilson.

Oscar Wilde was in prison for "gross indecency" from 1895 to 1897.

In 1896 Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème was staged, as was Chekov's play The Seagull. H. G. Wells published The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau. William Morris died 3 October. Mark Twain published Tom Sawyer, Detective. Alfred Jarry, only 23 years old, wrote his highly influential play Ubu Roi, which is often cited as a forerunner to the theatre of the absurd.

In 1897 Bram Stoker published Dracula. H.G. Wells published The Invisible Man.

In 1898 Henry James published The Turn of the Screw. H.G. Wells publishes The War of the Worlds. Oscar Wilde published The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

In 1899 Chekov's play Uncle Vanya was staged. Mark Twain published A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. H.G. Wells published When The Sleeper Wakes. Grant Allen died. Oscar Wilde staged his plays The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband one year before his death in 1900.

When the Nineteenth century ended the genres of horror, ghost stories, westerns, children's literature, crime fiction, science fiction, historical novels and fantasy had all been established.

See main article: Modern European Literature

See also: List of years in literature:

1800s - 1810s - 1820s - 1830s - 1840s - 1850s - 1860s - 1870s - 1880s - 1890s - 1900s -

Wood pulp in stead of linen pulp (late 19th century)

Realism in French 19th century literature

See French literature of the 19th century

The expression "Realism", when applied to literature of the 19th century, implies the attempt to depict contemporary life and society. The growth of realism is linked to the development of science (especially biology), history and the social sciences and to the growth of industrialism and commerce. The "realist" tendency is not necessarily anti-romantic; romanticism in France often affirmed the common man and the natural setting (such as the peasant stories of George Sand) and concerned itself with historical forces and periods (as in the work of historian Jules Michelet).

The novels of Stendhal (including The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma) address issues of their contemporary society while also using themes and characters derived from the romantic movement. Honoré de Balzac is the most prominent representative of 19th century realism in fiction. His La Comédie humaine, a vast collection of nearly 100 novels, was the most ambitious scheme ever devised by a writer of fiction -- nothing less than a complete contemporary history of his countrymen. Realism also appears in the works of Alexandre Dumas, fils.

Many of the novels in this period (including Balzac's) were published in newspapers in serial form, and the immensely popular realist "roman feuilleton" tended to specialize in portraying the hidden side of urban life (crime, police spies, criminal slang), as in the novels of Eugène Sue. Similar tendencies appeared in the theatrical melodramas of the period and, in an even more lurid and gruesome light, in the Grand Guignol at the end of the century.

Gustave Flaubert's great novels Madame Bovary (1857) -- which reveals the tragic consequences of romanticism on the wife of a provincial doctor -- and Sentimental Education represent perhaps the highest stages in the development of French realism, while Flaubert's romanticism is apparent in his fantastic The Temptation of Saint Anthony and the baroque and exotic scenes of ancient Carthage in Salammbô.

In addition to melodramas, popular and bourgeois theater in the mid-century turned to realism in the "well-made" bourgeois farces of Eugène Marin Labiche and the moral dramas of Émile Augier. Also popular were the operettas, farces and comedies of Ludovic Halévy, Henri Meilhac, and, at the turn of the century, Georges Feydeau.

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