The Victorian Era

Who Wrote the First Victorian Novel?

Article · Literature & Theatre · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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The question of who wrote the first Victorian novel is more a question of definition than of fact, since the answer depends on what is meant by Victorian and what is meant by novel. If the question is the first novel published during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), the answer is complicated by the fact that the early years of the reign saw the publication of several important novels by writers who had begun their careers in the 1820s and 1830s. If the question is the work that defined the Victorian novel as a distinct form, the most common answer is Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers (1836-37) or, slightly later, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). And if the question is the work that first consciously engaged with the characteristic Victorian themes of industrialisation, urbanisation, class, poverty, religion, science, and empire, the answer is more complicated still. The history of the Victorian novel is examined in The Victorian Novel, and the broader context is set out in Victorian Literature, Theatre, and the Written Word.

The Novels of the 1830s and 1840s

The 1830s and 1840s saw the publication of a number of important novels that laid the foundations of the Victorian novel. Dickens dominated the early years of the reign with The Pickwick Papers (1836-37), Oliver Twist (1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), and Barnaby Rudge (1841). Other significant novels of the period included Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Pelham (1828) and Paul Clifford (1830), Benjamin Disraeli’s Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845), with its famous picture of England’s “two nations”, and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848), the pioneering novel of industrial Manchester.

The Novels of the Brontë Sisters

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, were among the most important novelists of the early Victorian period, and they published their first novels in 1847. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, published in October 1847, was an immediate sensation, and remains one of the most famous novels of the Victorian period. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, published in December 1847, was less successful at first, but is now recognised as one of the finest novels of the period. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë, published in 1847, was the least commercially successful of the three, but is now recognised as an important early example of the Victorian novel. The Brontë sisters also published Shirley (1849), Villette (1853), and The Professor (1857, posthumous) by Charlotte, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by Anne.

Charles Dickens and the Victorian Novel

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was the most important novelist of the Victorian period, and is the writer most often taken to have defined the Victorian novel as a distinct form. He began his career as a journalist and shorthand reporter for the press, and published The Pickwick Papers in monthly shilling parts from April 1836 to November 1837. The novel was an immediate and extraordinary success, selling 40,000 copies of each monthly instalment by the end of its run, and it established Dickens as the most popular novelist in England. He went on to publish Oliver Twist (1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), Barnaby Rudge (1841), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44), A Christmas Carol (1843), Dombey and Son (1846-48), David Copperfield (1849-50), Bleak House (1852-53), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1855-57), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860-61), Our Mutual Friend (1864-65), and the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).

The Dickens novel was characterised by its humour, its sentiment, its social criticism, its memorable characters, its vivid descriptions, its plotting, its serial publication, its illustrations, its public readings, its popular appeal, and its enduring influence. The history of the period is examined in The Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview.

William Makepeace Thackeray and the Victorian Novel

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was the second most important novelist of the early Victorian period, and the principal rival of Charles Dickens. He published Vanity Fair in monthly shilling parts from January 1847 to July 1848, and the novel was immediately recognised as one of the finest works of the period, a satirical panorama of the Napoleonic era and the early Regency. He went on to publish Pendennis (1848-50), The History of Henry Esmond (1852), The Newcomes (1853-55), The Virginians (1857-59), and The Adventures of Philip (1861-62), together with the early burlesque The Yellowplush Papers (1837-38), The Book of Snobs (1846-48), and The Rose and the Ring (1855), the Christmas story he wrote for his daughters.

The Thackeray novel was characterised by its satire, its irony, its realism, its social criticism, and its panoramic scope. The rivalry of Thackeray and Dickens was the central fact of the early-Victorian literary world, and the two writers embodied the two principal modes of the Victorian novel: the Dickensian mode of sentiment and humour, and the Thackerayan mode of satire and observation.

The Sensation Novel and the Late Victorian Novel

The sensation novel was a particular feature of the mid and late Victorian period. The most important sensation novelists of the period were Wilkie Collins, the author of The Woman in White (1859-60) and The Moonstone (1868); Mary Elizabeth Braddon, the author of Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) and Aurora Floyd (1863); Mrs Henry Wood, the author of East Lynne (1861); Charles Reade, the author of Hard Cash (1863); and Sheridan Le Fanu, the author of Uncle Silas (1864) and In a Glass Darkly (1872). The sensation novel is examined in What is the sensation novel?.

The late-Victorian novel moved in several directions. The psychological novel of Henry James, George Meredith, and George Gissing, the regional novel of Thomas Hardy, the New Woman novel of Sarah Grand, Mona Caird, and Olive Schreiner, the imperial romance of H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson, the science fiction of H. G. Wells, and the late flowerings of the Trollope novel, the Meredith novel, the Gissing novel, and the Moore novel gave the 1880s and 1890s an extraordinary range. The history of the novel of the period is examined in The Victorian Novel.