19th century in literature  

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-[[Image:Edgar Allan Poe.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Edgar Allan Poe]] is an [[icon]] of [[19th century in literature|19th century literature]]]]{{Template}}+[[Image:A Th. Dostoiewski by Vallotton.jpg|thumb|200px|left|[[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]] (1821 – 1881)
-:''Note: the use of the terms "[[realism]]", "[[symbolism]]", "[[naturalism]]", etc. in this article is highly problematical. (1) The sections below do not imply a strict chronology: in the last half of the century, "naturalism", "[[parnassian]]" poetry and "symbolism", etc. were often competing tendencies at the same historical moment. (2) While some writers did form into literary groups defined by a name and a program or manifesto, in some cases these expressions were merely pejorative terms given by critics to certain writers or have been used by modern literary historians to group writers of wildly different projects or methods. Nevertheless, these labels can be useful in describing broad historical developments in the arts. Readers are cautioned to treat such labels with discretion however.''+<br>Illustration: ''[[A Th. Dostoiewski]]'' (1895) by [[Félix Vallotton]]]]
- +[[Image:Edgar Allan Poe.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Edgar Allan Poe]] (1809 – 1849) is an [[icon]] of [[19th century in literature|19th century literature]]]]
-The [[19th century]] was perhaps the most [[literary]] of all centuries, because not only were the forms of [[novel]], [[short story]] and [[serial|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]].+[[Image:Charles Baudelaire.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Charles Baudelaire]] (1821 – 1867) (portrait by [[Etienne Carjat]], ca. [[1863]])]]
-== Trends ==+{{Template}}
-[[Romanticism]] - +The [[19th century]] was perhaps the most [[literary]] of all centuries, because not only were the forms of [[novel]], [[short story]] and [[serial|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. Major trends included [[Romanticism]], the [[Decadent movement]], [[Naturalism (literature)|Naturalism]], [[Literary realism|Realism]] and [[Symbolist literature|Symbolist literature]].
-[[Decadent movement]] - [[Naturalism]] - [[Realism]] - [[French literature|French 19th century literature]] - [[Symbolism|Symbolist literature]] +
 +On the democratization of literature, [[Resa L. Dudovitz]] notes:
-== Titles ==+:"By the mid-nineteenth century [[cheap]]er [[edition]]s and improved access to reading material through subscriptions and in France, through reading rooms, pushed sales of a popular novel as high as 10,000 copies. Although critics continued to function as the [[arbiters of taste]], the critical [[elite]] could no longer claim literature to be their exclusive property."
-[[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 (novel)|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 ==+An excellent public domain overview of 19th century literature is found in Danish critic Georg Brandes's ''[[Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature]]''.
 +== Short overview ==
-At the beginning of the seventeenth century the novel had been a genre of [[realism (arts)|realism]] fighting the [[romance (genre)|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 novel]]s" creating stories in distant times and places. Renaissance Italy was a favorite setting of the gothic novel.+[[Literature]] of the [[19th century]] refers to [[world literature]] produced during the [[19th century]]. The range of years is, for the purpose of this article, [[literature]] written from (roughly) [[1799]] to [[1900]]. Many of the developments in literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts and other aspects of [[19th century]] culture.
-The classic gothic novel is [[Ann Radcliffe]]’s ''[[The Mysteries of Udolpho]]'' (1794). As in other gothic novels, the notion of the ''[[sublime (philosophy)|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]].+In Germany, the ''[[Sturm und Drang]]'' period of the late 18th century merges into a [[Classicism|Classicist]] and [[Romanticism|Romantic]] period, epitomized by the long era of [[Goethe]]'s activity, covering the first third of the century. The conservative ''[[Biedermeier]]'' style conflicts with the radical ''[[Vormärz]]'' in the turbulent period separating the end of the Napoleonic wars from the [[Revolutions of 1848]].
-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.+In Britain, the 19th century is dominated by the [[Victorian era]], characterized by [[Romanticism]], with [[Romantic poetry|Romantic poets]] such as [[William Wordsworth]], [[Lord Byron]] or [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] and genres such as the [[gothic novel]] and the [[fashionable novel]].
-== Russian literature ==+In the later 19th century, Romanticism is countered by [[Literary realism|Realism]] and [[Naturalism (literature)|Naturalism]]. The late 19th century, known as the ''[[Belle Époque]]'', with its ''[[Fin de siècle]]'' retrospectively appeared as a "golden age" of European culture, cut short by the outbreak of [[World War I]] in 1914.
-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 [[Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky|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 [[Alexander Herzen|Herzen]]; playwrights such as [[Alexandr Griboyedov|Griboedov]] and [[Alexandr Ostrovsky|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]], [[Nikolai Leskov|Leskov]], [[Ivan Turgenev]], [[Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin|Saltykov-Shchedrin]] and [[Ivan Goncharov|Goncharov]].+== Titles ==
 +[[The Crimes of Love]] (1800) - [[The Devil's Elixir]] (1815/16) - [[The Sandman]] (1817) - [[Frankenstein]] (1818) - [[Confessions of an English Opium Eater]] (1821) - [[Histoire de ma vie]] (1822) - [[The Lustful Turk]] (1828) - [[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 (novel)|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 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.+== By language ==
-== Realism in French 19th century literature ==+* [[French literature of the 19th century]]
-See [[French_literature_of_the_19th_century#Realism|Realism in French literature of the 19th century]]+* [[Russian literature of the 19th century]]
 +* [[Golden Age of Russian Poetry]]
 +* [[British literature of the 19th century]]
-==The late 19th century==+==Printing industry==
-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"''. +:''[[printing industry]]''
 +Paper remained relatively [[expensive]] through the centuries, until the advent of [[steam]]-driven paper making machines in the 19th century, which could make paper with [[wood pulp]]. Although older machines predated it, the [[Fourdrinier Machine|Fourdrinier]] paper making machine became the basis for most modern papermaking. Together with the invention of the practical [[fountain pen]] and the mass produced [[pencil]] of the same period, and in conjunction with the advent of the steam driven rotary [[printing press]], wood based paper caused a major transformation of the 19th century economy and society in industrialized countries. With the introduction of cheaper paper, schoolbooks, fiction, non-fiction, and newspapers became gradually available to all the members of an industrial society by 1900. Cheap wood based paper also meant that keeping personal diaries or writing letters became universal. The [[clerk]], or writer, ceased to be a high-status job, and by 1850 had nearly become an office worker or [[white-collar worker]] , which transformation can be considered as a part of the [[industrial revolution]].
-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 (psychology)|psyche]]. It is probably correct to describe Dostoyevski as the first [[Existentialist]] author. +Unfortunately, the original wood-based paper was more acidic and more prone to disintegrate over time, through processes known as [[slow fires]]. Documents written on more expensive [[rag paper]] were more stable. Mass-market paperback books still use these cheaper mechanical papers (see below), but the more careful book publishers now use [[acid-free paper]] for [[hardback]] and [[trade paperback]] books.
-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. +== See also ==
 +*[[Reading revolution]]
 +*[[Literacy]]
 +*''[[Notes on 19th century in literature terminology]]
 +*[[The 19th century and the Novel as the object of great Discussions]]
 +*[[Realism in French literature of the 19th century]]
 +*[[Wood pulp]] in stead of [[linen pulp]] for [[paper]]
 +*[[List of 19th century writers]]
 +*[[19th century censorship]]
 +*[[History of modern literature]]
-[[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 (novel)|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 [[Aestheticism|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 people|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 (novel)|The Possessed]]'' (or ''Demons'' or ''The Devils''). Lewis Carroll published ''[[Through the Looking-Glass]] and what Alice Found There''. [[Samuel Butler (1835-1902)|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 (novel)|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 (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]].  
- 
-In[[1884]] Mark Twain published ''[[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]''.  
- 
-[[Gilbert and Sullivan]]'s [[operetta]]s ''[[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 (novel)|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 [[operetta]]s ''[[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 (play)|Salomé]]'' (French version) and ''[[Lady Windermere's Fan]]''. His ''[[A Woman of No Importance]]'' and the English version of ''[[Salomé (play)|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 (novel)|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 fiction|horror]], [[ghost story|ghost stories]], [[western fiction|western]]s, [[children's literature]], [[crime fiction]], [[science fiction]], [[historical novel]]s and [[fantasy]] had all been established.  
- 
-See main article: [[Modern European Literature]] 
- 
-See also: [[List of years in literature]]: 
- 
-[[List of years in literature#1800s|1800s]] - [[List of years in literature#1810s|1810s]] - [[List of years in literature#1820s|1820s]] - [[List of years in literature#1830s|1830s]] - [[List of years in literature#1840s|1840s]] - [[List of years in literature#1850s|1850s]] - [[List of years in literature#1860s|1860s]] - [[List of years in literature#1870s|1870s]] - [[List of years in literature#1880s|1880s]] - [[List of years in literature#1890s|1890s]] - [[List of years in literature#1900s|1900s]] - 
- 
-== Wood pulp in stead of linen pulp (late 19th century) == 
-*[[Paper]] and [[wood pulp]] 
- 
-== Realism in French 19th century literature == 
-:See [[French literature of the 19th century]] 
- 
-The expression "[[realism (arts)|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 [[melodrama]]s 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 (novel)|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]]. 
- 
-== By language == 
-* [[French literature of the 19th century]] 
{{GFDL}} {{GFDL}}

Revision as of 08:44, 19 August 2019

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821 – 1881)  Illustration: A Th. Dostoiewski (1895) by Félix Vallotton
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821 – 1881)
Illustration: A Th. Dostoiewski (1895) by Félix Vallotton
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) is an icon of 19th century literature
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Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) is an icon of 19th century literature
Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) (portrait by Etienne Carjat, ca. 1863)
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Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) (portrait by Etienne Carjat, ca. 1863)

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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. Major trends included Romanticism, the Decadent movement, Naturalism, Realism and Symbolist literature.

On the democratization of literature, Resa L. Dudovitz notes:

"By the mid-nineteenth century cheaper editions and improved access to reading material through subscriptions and in France, through reading rooms, pushed sales of a popular novel as high as 10,000 copies. Although critics continued to function as the arbiters of taste, the critical elite could no longer claim literature to be their exclusive property."

An excellent public domain overview of 19th century literature is found in Danish critic Georg Brandes's Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature.

Contents

Short overview

Literature of the 19th century refers to world literature produced during the 19th century. The range of years is, for the purpose of this article, literature written from (roughly) 1799 to 1900. Many of the developments in literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts and other aspects of 19th century culture.

In Germany, the Sturm und Drang period of the late 18th century merges into a Classicist and Romantic period, epitomized by the long era of Goethe's activity, covering the first third of the century. The conservative Biedermeier style conflicts with the radical Vormärz in the turbulent period separating the end of the Napoleonic wars from the Revolutions of 1848.

In Britain, the 19th century is dominated by the Victorian era, characterized by Romanticism, with Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth, Lord Byron or Samuel Taylor Coleridge and genres such as the gothic novel and the fashionable novel.

In the later 19th century, Romanticism is countered by Realism and Naturalism. The late 19th century, known as the Belle Époque, with its Fin de siècle retrospectively appeared as a "golden age" of European culture, cut short by the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

Titles

The Crimes of Love (1800) - The Devil's Elixir (1815/16) - The Sandman (1817) - Frankenstein (1818) - Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) - Histoire de ma vie (1822) - The Lustful Turk (1828) - 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)

By language

Printing industry

printing industry

Paper remained relatively expensive through the centuries, until the advent of steam-driven paper making machines in the 19th century, which could make paper with wood pulp. Although older machines predated it, the Fourdrinier paper making machine became the basis for most modern papermaking. Together with the invention of the practical fountain pen and the mass produced pencil of the same period, and in conjunction with the advent of the steam driven rotary printing press, wood based paper caused a major transformation of the 19th century economy and society in industrialized countries. With the introduction of cheaper paper, schoolbooks, fiction, non-fiction, and newspapers became gradually available to all the members of an industrial society by 1900. Cheap wood based paper also meant that keeping personal diaries or writing letters became universal. The clerk, or writer, ceased to be a high-status job, and by 1850 had nearly become an office worker or white-collar worker , which transformation can be considered as a part of the industrial revolution.

Unfortunately, the original wood-based paper was more acidic and more prone to disintegrate over time, through processes known as slow fires. Documents written on more expensive rag paper were more stable. Mass-market paperback books still use these cheaper mechanical papers (see below), but the more careful book publishers now use acid-free paper for hardback and trade paperback books.

See also




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