British literature

J. M. Barrie, 1890

real stories of archaeological discoveries by imperial ad­venturers. Sir Henry Rider Haggard wrote one of the ear­liest examples, King Solomon’s Mines, in 1885. Contem­porary European politics and diplomatic manoeuvrings informed Anthony Hope's swashbuckling Ruritanian ad­venture novels The Prisoner of Zenda 1894. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) also wrote works in this genre in­cluding, Kidnapped (1886), an historical novel set in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745, and Treasure Island )1883), the classic pirate adventure.

Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel The Moonstone (1868), is generally considered the first detective novel in the En­glish language, and soon after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle began his Sherlock Holmes series about a London-based “consulting detective”. Doyle wrote four novels and fifty- six short stories featuring Holmes, from 1880 up to 1907, with a final case in 1914.

H. G. Wells's (1866-1946) writing career began in the 1890s with science fiction novels like The War of the Worlds (1898) which describes an invasion of late Vic­torian England by Martians, and Wells is, along with Frenchman Jules Verne (1828-1905), as a major figure in the development of the science fiction genre.

The history of the modern fantasy genre is generally said to begin with George MacDonald, the influential author of The Princess and the Goblin and Phantastes (1858). William Morris was a popular English poet who also wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The vampire genre fiction began with




Lewis Carroll

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Scotland of an Irish mother and a father of Irish descent, but his Sherlock Holmes stories are set in a foggy London
8.2 Victorian poetry

Main article: English poetry (Victorian)

The leading poets during the Victorian period were

John William Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819). This short story was inspired by the life of Lord Byron and his poem The Giaour. Irish writer Bram Stoker was the author of seminal horror work Dracula (1897) with the primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula.

Penny dreadful publications were an alternative to main­stream works, and were aimed at working class adoles­cents, introducing the infamous Sweeney Todd. The pre­mier ghost story writer of the 19th century was the Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu,

■ ■ ■ ■■ ‘ i ■ • ■ ' '

■ щНщ. •

. - ^{; :v} • '.

1. 
   ^v ..
   

■^Г P

4. 
   Children’s literature
   

Literature for children developed as a separate genre dur­ing the Victorian era, and some works became interna­tionally known, such as Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). At the end of nineteenth-century, the author and illustrator Beatrix Potter was known for her children’s books, which featured animal characters, including The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902). In the latter years of the 19th century, precursors of the modern pic­ture book were illustrated books of poems and short sto­ries produced by illustrators Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane, and Kate Greenaway. These had a larger propor­tion of pictures to words than earlier books, and many of their pictures were in colour.