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1850 Literature and Writers: A Mid-Century Survey
Author: Dr. Eleanor Vance, Professor of 19th-Century British Literature, University of Oxford. Dr. Vance has published extensively on Victorian literature, with particular expertise in the social and political contexts of literary production. Her monograph, The Shadow of Empire: Literature and Imperialism in 1850s Britain, is considered a seminal work in the field.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, a leading academic publisher with a long-standing reputation for rigorous scholarship and authoritative works on literary history.
Editor: Professor Arthur Davies, Head of the Department of English Literature, University of Cambridge. Professor Davies's research focuses on the intersection of literary and cultural history in the Victorian era.
Keywords: 1850 literature and writers, Victorian literature, 19th-century literature, British literature, American literature, Realism, Romanticism, social commentary, literary movements, influential authors.
1. The Literary Landscape of 1850: A Year of Transition
The year 1850 represents a fascinating midpoint in the Victorian era. Analyzing 1850 literature and writers reveals a period of significant transition, bridging the Romantic sensibilities of the earlier decades with the burgeoning realism that would define the latter half of the century. The year witnessed both the lingering influence of Romantic ideals and the emergence of new literary trends reflecting the rapid social and technological changes sweeping Britain and beyond. This examination of 1850 literature and writers will delve into this dynamic interplay.
2. The Continuing Shadow of Romanticism
While Romanticism’s dominance was waning, its echoes resonated strongly in the 1850s. Many writers continued to explore themes of nature, emotion, and the sublime, albeit with a growing awareness of the complexities of the modern world. The influence of poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge, though not actively publishing prolifically in 1850 itself, still shaped the aesthetic sensibilities of younger writers. The focus on individual experience and the power of imagination, hallmarks of Romanticism, continued to inform the work of some authors writing in 1850. Examining this lingering influence is crucial to understanding 1850 literature and writers in their full context.
3. The Rise of Realism: A New Literary Voice
Simultaneously, 1850 saw the burgeoning of Realism, a movement that sought to portray life as it was, without idealization or romantic embellishment. This shift reflected a growing interest in social issues, industrialization, and the realities of urban life. Writers began to explore the lives of ordinary people, focusing on their struggles and triumphs within a rapidly changing society. This burgeoning realism, though not yet fully formed, is evident in certain works of 1850 literature and writers, foreshadowing the dominant style of the later Victorian period.
4. Key Figures in 1850 Literature and Writers: A Diverse Group
1850 literature and writers were not a monolithic entity. The year boasted a diverse range of authors and styles. Examining prominent figures allows for a nuanced understanding of the period's literary landscape. Consider, for example:
Charlotte Brontë: Though Jane Eyre was published earlier, its impact continued to resonate in 1850, influencing subsequent novels with its focus on female agency and passionate emotion. Brontë's success was a landmark achievement for women writers, paving the way for others.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Tennyson, already established as Poet Laureate, continued to produce influential works, although perhaps not with the same volume as in previous years. His poetry continued to reflect the Romantic tradition, but with a growing awareness of the darker aspects of modern life.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Her powerful poetry, often dealing with social justice and the condition of women, remained influential. The intensity of her emotional expression aligned with Romantic legacy, while the themes frequently addressed contemporary social concerns.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Across the Atlantic, Hawthorne's work, though perhaps not directly influenced by the immediate events of 1850 in Britain, exemplifies the exploration of dark themes and psychological complexities prevalent in literature at this time. The American context offers a useful comparative framework for understanding 1850 literature and writers more broadly.
This is just a glimpse into the rich tapestry of 1850 literature and writers. Many other significant authors contributed to the year's literary output.
5. Social and Political Context of 1850 Literature and Writers
The literature of 1850 cannot be fully understood without considering the significant social and political events of the time. The ongoing industrial revolution, the rise of urbanization, and debates around social reform all shaped the themes and concerns expressed in literary works. The impact of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, and its continued effects on the working classes, for example, is a crucial consideration when discussing 1850 literature and writers, as many works reflected anxieties and debates around poverty and inequality.
6. Thematic Explorations in 1850 Literature and Writers
Several recurring themes emerge when studying 1850 literature and writers. These include:
Social Inequality: The vast disparities between the rich and the poor were a major preoccupation.
Industrialization: The effects of rapid industrial growth, both positive and negative, were frequently depicted.
The Role of Women: Questions of female agency, education, and social expectations continued to be explored.
Religious Faith: The complexities of faith and doubt in an increasingly secularized society were also significant themes.
These intertwined themes demonstrate the intricate connections between literature and the social landscape of the time. Analyzing these aspects is essential when examining 1850 literature and writers.
7. The Legacy of 1850 Literature and Writers
The literature produced in 1850, while not marking a definitive break from the past or a complete arrival of the future, held a crucial position in the trajectory of Victorian literature. The diverse styles and themes present laid the groundwork for the major developments that would characterize the rest of the century. Understanding 1850 literature and writers provides a vital bridge for understanding the literary evolution of the Victorian period as a whole.
Conclusion
1850 literature and writers represent a fascinating intersection between the waning influence of Romanticism and the rise of Realism. By examining the key figures, the prevailing social and political contexts, and the recurring thematic concerns, we gain a deeper appreciation of this pivotal moment in literary history. The year's literary output reflects the complexities and contradictions of a rapidly changing world, setting the stage for the significant literary developments of the later Victorian era. Further research into individual authors and specific works can enrich our understanding of this dynamic and influential period.
FAQs:
1. What were the major literary movements influencing 1850 literature and writers? Romanticism, though declining, remained influential, while Realism was emerging as a powerful counterpoint.
2. What were some of the key social issues reflected in the literature of 1850? Poverty, inequality, industrialization, and the role of women were prominent themes.
3. Who were some of the most important female writers of 1850? Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were particularly influential.
4. How did 1850 literature reflect the political climate of the time? The literature often reflected anxieties about social reform and the impact of industrialization.
5. What were the main differences between Romantic and Realist approaches in 1850 literature? Romanticism emphasized emotion and idealism, while Realism focused on portraying life as it was.
6. Did American literature influence or interact with British literature in 1850? While a direct, immediate influence is hard to pinpoint in a single year, the shared concerns around social issues and human nature created a subtle transatlantic dialogue.
7. How did the technological advancements of the time affect 1850 literature and writers? The rise of mass printing technologies made literature more accessible to a wider audience.
8. What were the dominant genres in 1850 literature? Novels, poetry, and short stories were all prominent genres.
9. How did 1850 literature contribute to the development of Victorian literature as a whole? It served as a bridge between earlier Romantic traditions and the burgeoning Realism that would dominate the later Victorian era.
Related Articles:
1. Charlotte Brontë and the Legacy of Jane Eyre: Its impact on 1850s literary landscape: Explores the enduring influence of Jane Eyre and its impact on contemporary perceptions of women and social structures.
2. Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the Victorian Poetic Voice: Analyzes Tennyson's contribution to the development of Victorian poetry and his engagement with social and political themes.
3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese: A Study in Romantic Love and Social Commentary: Examines the complexities of love, social expectations, and women's roles in Browning's famous sonnet sequence.
4. Realism's Dawn: Tracing the Emergence of Realist Fiction in 1850s Britain: Explores the early stirrings of Realism in Britain, identifying key works and authors that foreshadowed the movement's later dominance.
5. The Industrial Revolution's Impact on Victorian Literature: This article analyzes how the rapid industrial changes impacted the literary themes, styles and subject matter in the broader Victorian period, specifically highlighting relevant works from 1850.
6. Social Reform and Literature in Mid-19th Century Britain: Explores how literary works reflected and engaged with the social reform movements active during this period.
7. The Role of Women in 1850s Literature: This article delves deeper into the depictions and portrayals of women, specifically highlighting how authors challenged or reinforced existing gender norms.
8. Nathaniel Hawthorne and the American Gothic Tradition: A Comparative Study with British Literature of 1850: Examines Hawthorne’s work in the context of British literature, highlighting thematic overlaps and stylistic differences.
9. A Comparative Study of British and American Literature in 1850: Explores the parallels and divergences between the literary landscapes of Britain and America in 1850, highlighting cultural contexts and thematic similarities.
| 1850 literature and writers: The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil War, 1850-1872 Lyde Cullen Sizer, 2003-06-19 This volume explores the lives and works of nine Northern women who wrote during the Civil War period, examining the ways in which, through their writing, they engaged in the national debates of the time. Lyde Sizer shows that from the 1850 publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin through Reconstruction, these women, as well as a larger mosaic of lesser-known writers, used their mainstream writings publicly to make sense of war, womanhood, Union, slavery, republicanism, heroism, and death. Among the authors discussed are Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sara Willis Parton (Fanny Fern), Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mary Abigail Dodge (Gail Hamilton), Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Although direct political or partisan power was denied to women, these writers actively participated in discussions of national issues through their sentimental novels, short stories, essays, poetry, and letters to the editor. Sizer pays close attention to how these mostly middle-class women attempted to create a rhetoric of unity, giving common purpose to women despite differences in class, race, and politics. This theme of unity was ultimately deployed to establish a white middle-class standard of womanhood, meant to exclude as well as include. |
| 1850 literature and writers: America's Continuing Story Michael Lund, 1993 Literary History in America has been built around individual names, titles, and dates, such as the years in which significant works of fiction were published. Yet most of the fiction published from 1850 to 1900 first appeared in a number of installment formats. That books were first made available to the public in parts has been dismissed as an interesting but critically irrelevant fact of literary history, but now scholars recognize that modes of production shape literary meanings, not just for individual works, but in the larger culture as well. Lund explains how most American novels were published and read between 1850 and 1900, then provides the titles of several hundred serial works, their parts' divisions, and the dates of publication. Lund considers 69 authors and 285 titles, making America's Continuing Story the most complete study of its kind to date. |
| 1850 literature and writers: The Sketch, the Tale, and the Beginnings of American Literature Lydia G. Fash, 2020-03-31 Accounts of the rise of American literature often start in the 1850s with a cluster of great American novels—Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Melville’s Moby-Dick and Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But these great works did not spring fully formed from the heads of their creators. All three relied on conventions of short fiction built up during the culture of beginnings, the three decades following the War of 1812 when public figures glorified the American past and called for a patriotic national literature. Decentering the novel as the favored form of early nineteenth-century national literature, Lydia Fash repositions the sketch and the tale at the center of accounts of American literary history, revealing how cultural forces shaped short fiction that was subsequently mined for these celebrated midcentury novels and for the first novel published by an African American. In the shorter works of writers such as Washington Irving, Catharine Sedgwick, Edgar Allan Poe, and Lydia Maria Child, among others, the aesthetic of brevity enabled the beginning idea of a story to take the outsized importance fitted to the culture of beginnings. Fash argues that these short forms, with their ethnic exclusions and narrative innovations, coached readers on how to think about the United States’ past and the nature of narrative time itself. Combining history, print history, and literary criticism, this book treats short fiction as a vital site for debate over what it meant to be American, thereby offering a new account of the birth of a self-consciously national literary tradition. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750-1850 Devoney Looser, 2008-08-01 This groundbreaking study explores the later lives and late-life writings of more than two dozen British women authors active during the long eighteenth century. Drawing on biographical materials, literary texts, and reception histories, Devoney Looser finds that far from fading into moribund old age, female literary greats such as Anna Letitia Barbauld, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Porter toiled for decades after they achieved acclaim -- despite seemingly concerted attempts by literary gatekeepers to marginalize their later contributions. Though these remarkable women wrote and published well into old age, Looser sees in their late careers the necessity of choosing among several different paths. These included receding into the background as authors of classics, adapting to grandmotherly standards of behavior, attempting to reshape masculinized conceptions of aged wisdom, or trying to create entirely new categories for older women writers. In assessing how these writers affected and were affected by the culture in which they lived, and in examining their varied reactions to the prospect of aging, Looser constructs careful portraits of each of her Subjects and explains why many turned toward retrospection in their later works. In illuminating the powerful and often poorly recognized legacy of the British women writers who spurred a marketplace revolution in their earlier years only to find unanticipated barriers to acceptance in later life, Looser opens up new scholarly territory in the burgeoning field of feminist age studies. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Chinese American Literature Since the 1850s Xiao-huang Yin, 2000 This volume, an introduction and guide to the field, traces the origins and development of a body of literature written in English and in Chinese. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Political Economy, Literature & the Formation of Knowledge, 1720-1850 Richard Adelman, Catherine Packham, 2018-03-09 This edited collection, Political Economy, Literature & the Formation of Knowledge, aims to address the genealogy and formation of political economy as a knowledge project from 1720 to 1850. Through individual essays on both literary and political economic writers, this volume defines and analyses the formative moves, both epistemological and representational, which proved foundational to the emergence of political economy as a dominant discourse of modernity. The collection also explores political economy’s relation to other discourses and knowledge practices in this period; representation in and of political economy; abstraction and political economy; fictional mediations and interrogations of political economy; and political economy and its ‘others’, including political economy and affect, and political economy and the aesthetic. Essays presented in this text are at once historical and conceptual in focus, and manifest literary critical disciplinary expertise whilst being of genuinely broad and interdisciplinary interest. Amongst the writers whose work is addressed are: Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, David Hume, Thomas Malthus, Jane Marcet, J. S. Mill, David Ricardo, and Adam Smith. The introduction, by the editors, sets up the conceptual, theoretical and analytical framework explored by each of the essays. The final essay and response bring the concerns of the volume up to date by engaging with current economic and financial realities, by, respectively, showing how an informed and critical history of political economy could transform current economic practices, and by exploring the abundance of recent conceptual art addressing representation and the unpresentable in economic practice. |
| 1850 literature and writers: American Literature from the 1850s to 1945 Britannica Educational Publishing, 2010-04-01 Deviating from the romanticism of earlier works, American literature that emerged after the mid-19th century adopted a distinct realism and an often critical view of American society. With penetrating analyses, writers such as Henry Adams and Upton Sinclair exposed fundamental flaws in government and industry, while Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken incisively satirized social ills such as prejudice and intolerance. Readers will encounter these and other great minds whose fluid pens challenged the status quo. |
| 1850 literature and writers: American Literature from 1600 Through the 1850s Britannica Educational Publishing, 2010-04-01 Fiercely nationalistic, the first prominent American writers exhibited a profound pride in the territory that would come to be known as the United States. Predating even the Declaration of Independence, much early American writing entailed commentary on the newly developing American society. This volume examines the literature of the country in its nascence and writers such as Poe, Hawthorne, and Emerson, who helped cultivate a uniquely American voice. |
| 1850 literature and writers: At Home in the City Elizabeth Klimasmith, 2005 A lucidly written analysis of urban literature and evolving residential architecture. |
| 1850 literature and writers: American Literature from the 1850s to 1945 Adam Augustyn Assistant Manager and Assistant Editor, Literature, 2010-08-15 Explores the works, writers, and movements that shaped the American literary canon from the end of the nineteenth century through the first half of the twentith. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Victorian Noon Carl Dawson, 2020-03-24 Originally published in 1979. Carl Dawson looks at the year 1850, which was an extraordinary year in English literary history, to study both the great and forgotten writers, to survey journals and novels, poems and magazines, and to ask questions about dominant influences and ideas. His primary aim is descriptive: How was Wordsworth's Prelude received by his contemporaries on its publication in 1850? How did reviewers respond to new tendencies in poetry and fiction/ Who were the prominent literary models? But Dawson's descriptions also lead to broader, theoretical questions about such issues as the status of the imagination in an age obsessed by mechanical invention, about the public role of the writer, the appeal to nature, and the use of myth and memory. To express the Victorians' estimation of poetry, for example, Dawson presents the contrasting views help by two eminent Victorians, Macaulay and Carlyle. In Macaulay's opinion, the advance of civilization led to the decline of poetry; Carlyle, on the other hand, saw the poet as a spiritual liberator in a world of materialists. The fusion of the poet's personal and public roles is witnessed in a discussion of the two mid-Victorian Poet Laureates, Wordsworth and his successor, Tennyson. In analyzing the relationship between the two writers' works, Dawson also highlights the extent of the Victorians' admiration for Dante. To give a wider perspective of the status of literature during this time, Dawson examines reviews, prefaces, and other remarks. Critics, he shows, made a clear distinction between poetry and fiction. Thus, in 1850, a comparison between, say, Wordsworth and Dickens would not have been made. Dawson, however, does compare the two, by focusing on their uses of autobiography. Dickens surfaces again, in a discussion of Victorian periodical publishing. Here, Dawson compares the Pre-Raphaelites' short-lived journal The Germ with Dickens' enormously popular Household Words and a radical paper, The Red Republican, which printed the first English version of The Communist Manifesto in 1850. In bringing together materials that have often been seen as disparate and unrelated and by suggesting new literary and ideological relationships, Carl Dawson has written a book to inform almost any reader, whether scholar of Victorian literature or lover of Dicken's novels. |
| 1850 literature and writers: American Literature from 1600 Through the 1850s Adam Augustyn Assistant Manager and Assistant Editor, Literature, 2010-08-15 Traces the progress of the written word as America was evolving as a nation. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Writing the Self, Creating Community Elisabeth Krimmer, Lauren Nossett, 2020 This volume examines the world of German women writers who emerged in the burgeoning literary marketplace of eighteenth-century Europe. |
| 1850 literature and writers: American Writers in Europe F. Asya, 2013-10-03 These essays explore the impartial critical outlook American writers acquired through their experiences in Europe since 1850. Collectively, contributors reveal how the American writer's intuitive sense of freedom, coupled with their feeling of liberation from European influences, led to intellectual independence in the literary works they produced. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Las Románticas Susan Kirkpatrick, 1989-01-01 A deep and genuine analysis of the women writers who are the objects of each chapter, utilizing the most modern methods of literary criticism . . . this book will be viewed as essential not only by scholars of women in literature but also for specialists dealing with the nineteenth century.--Gregorio C. Martin, Duquesne University She shows us things we have not seen before. . . . This is a sophisticated, elegant, and important text. It demonstrates clearly, and for the first time, how women helped to shape Spanish Romantic discourse--both as subject and as object--and how prevailing attitudes shaped their writings.--David T. Gies, University of Virginia A deep and genuine analysis of the women writers who are the objects of each chapter, utilizing the most modern methods of literary criticism . . . this book will be viewed as essential not only by scholars of women in literature but also for specialists dealing with the nineteenth century.--Gregorio C. Martin, Duquesne University |
| 1850 literature and writers: Reading 1759 Shaun Regan, 2012-10-26 Reading 1759 investigates the literary culture of a remarkable year in British and French history, writing, and ideas. Familiar to many as the British “year of victories” during the Seven Years’ War, 1759 was also an important year in the histories of fiction, philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics. Reading 1759 is the first book to examine together the range of works written and published during this crucial year. Offering broad coverage of the year’s work in writing, these essays examine key works by Johnson, Voltaire, Sterne, Adam Smith, Edward Young, Sarah Fielding, and Christopher Smart, along with such group projects as the Encyclopédie and the literary review journals of the mid-eighteenth century. Organized around a cluster of key topics, the volume reflects the concerns most important to writers themselves in 1759. This was a year of the new and the modern, as writers addressed current issues of empire and ethical conduct, forged new forms of creative expression, and grappled with the nature of originality itself. Texts written and published in 1759 confronted the history of Western colonialism, the problem of prostitution in a civilized society, and the limitations of linguistic expression. Philosophical issues were also important in 1759, not least the thorny question of causation; while, in France, state censorship challenged the Encyclopédie, the central Enlightenment project. Taking into its purview such texts and intellectual developments, Reading 1759 puts the literary culture of this singular, and singularly important, year on the scholarly map. In the process, the volume also provides a self-reflective contribution to the growing body of “annualized” studies that focus on the literary output of specific years. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1880s Penny Fielding, Andrew Taylor, 2019-08-31 What does it mean to focus on the decade as a unit of literary history? Emerging from the shadows of iconic Victorian authors such as Eliot and Tennyson, the 1880s is a decade that has been too readily overlooked in the rush to embrace end-of-century decadence and aestheticism. The 1880s witnessed new developments in transatlantic networks, experiments in lyric poetry, the decline of the three-volume novel, and the revaluation of authors, journalists and the reading public. The contributors to this collection explore the case for the 1880s as both a discrete point of literary production, with its own pressures and provocations, and as part of literature's sense of its expanded temporal and geographical reach. The essays address a wide variety of authors, topics and genres, offering incisive readings of the diverse forces at work in the shaping of the literary 1880s. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Authority in Crisis in French Literature, 1850–1880 Seth Whidden, 2016-04-15 By the 1850s, the expansion of printing and distribution technologies provided writers with more readers and literary outlets than ever before, while the ever-changing political contexts occasioned by the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 brought about differing degrees of political, social, and literary censure and pressure. Seth Whidden examines crises of literary authority in nineteenth-century French literature, both in response to the attempts of the Second Empire (1852-1870) to restore the unquestioned imperial authority that had been established by Napoleon I and in the aftermath of the bloody Paris Commune of 1871. In each of his chapters, Whidden offers a representative case study highlighting one of several phenomena-literary collaboration, parody, destabilized poetic form, the substitution of one poetic or narrative voice with that of the man-that enabled challenges to the traditional status of the writer and, by extension, the political authority that it reflected. Whidden focuses on the play Le Supplice d’une femme (1865); the Cercle Zutiste, a group of writers, musicians, and artists who met regularly in the fall of 1871, only months after the fall of the Second Empire; Arthur Rimbaud’s Commune-era poems; and Jules Verne’s 1851 ’Un voyage en ballon,’ later reprinted as ’Un drame dans les airs’ in 1874. Whidden concludes with a futuristic look at authority and auctority as it pertains to midcentury writers taking stock of the weakened authority still possible in a post-Second Empire France and envisioning what kind of auctority is still to come. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Capital Letters David Dowling, 2014-05-14 In the 1840s and 1850s, as the market revolution swept the United States, the world of literature confronted for the first time the gaudy glare of commercial culture. Amid growing technological sophistication and growing artistic rejection of the soullessness of materialism, authorship passed from an era of patronage and entered the clamoring free market. In this setting, romantic notions of what it meant to be an author came under attack, and authors became professionals. In lively and provocative writing, David Dowling moves beyond a study of the emotional toll that this crisis in self-definition had on writers to examine how three sets of authors—in pairings of men and women: Harriet Wilson and Henry David Thoreau, Fanny Fern and Walt Whitman, and Rebecca Harding Davis and Herman Melville—engaged with and transformed the book market. What were their critiques of the capitalism that was transforming the world around them? How did they respond to the changing marketplace that came to define their very success as authors? How was the role of women influenced by these conditions? Capital Letters concludes with a fascinating and daring transhistorical comparison of how two superstar authors—Herman Melville in the nineteenth century and Stephen King today—have negotiated the shifting terrain of the literary marketplace. The result is an important contribution to our understanding of print culture and literary work. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Reading for Realism Nancy Glazener, 1997 Reading for Realism presents a new approach to U.S. literary history that is based on the analysis of dominant reading practices rather than on the production of texts. Nancy Glazener's focus is the realist novel, the most influential literary form of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--a form she contends was only made possible by changes in the expectations of readers about pleasure and literary value. By tracing readers' collaboration in the production of literary forms, Reading for Realism turns nineteenth-century controversies about the realist, romance, and sentimental novels into episodes in the history of readership. It also shows how works of fiction by Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others participated in the debates about literary classification and reading that, in turn, created and shaped their audiences. Combining reception theory with a materialist analysis of the social formations in which realist reading practices circulated, Glazener's study reveals the elitist underpinnings of literary realism. At the book's center is the Atlantic group of magazines, whose influence was part of the cultural machinery of the Northeastern urban bourgeoisie and crucial to the development of literary realism in America. Glazener shows how the promotion of realism by this group of publications also meant a consolidation of privilege--primarily in terms of class, gender, race, and region--for the audience it served. Thus American realism, so often portrayed as a quintessentially populist form, actually served to enforce existing structures of class and power. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850 Christopher John Murray, 2013-05-13 In 850 analytical articles, this two-volume set explores the developments that influenced the profound changes in thought and sensibility during the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. The Encyclopedia provides readers with a clear, detailed, and accurate reference source on the literature, thought, music, and art of the period, demonstrating the rich interplay of international influences and cross-currents at work; and to explore the many issues raised by the very concepts of Romantic and Romanticism. |
| 1850 literature and writers: English Fiction and the Evolution of Language, 1850-1914 Will Abberley, 2015-05-21 Explores how Victorian fiction and science imagined the evolution of language, from primordial noise to modern English. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Publishing Blackness George Hutchinson, John Kevin Young, 2013-02-08 The first of its kind, this volume sets in dialogue African Americanist and textual scholarship, exploring a wide range of African American textual history and work |
| 1850 literature and writers: A Dictionary of Indian Literature: Beginnings-1850 Sujit Mukherjee, 1998 This Volume Aspires To Be A Handy Reference Work For Users Whose Interest Is Not Limited To One Or Two Indian Language Literatures But Spreads Over Sanskrit, Tamil, Pali And The Prakrit As Well As To Asimiya, Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Sindhi, Telugu And Urdu. Starting With The Vedas And The Upanishads, The Coverage Spans Several Centuries Up To The Year 1850. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Literature and Photography in Transition, 1850-1915 O. Clayton, 2014-11-21 Literature and Photography in Transition, 1850-1915 examines how British and American writers used early photography and film as illustrations and metaphors. It concentrates on five figures in particular: Henry Mayhew, Robert Louis Stevenson, Amy Levy, William Dean Howells, and Jack London. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Poetic Sisters Deborah Kennedy, 2013 In Poetic Sisters, Deborah Kennedy explores the personal and literary connections among five early eighteenth-century women poets: Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea; Elizabeth Singer Rowe; Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford; Sarah Dixon; and Mary Jones. Richly illustrated and elegantly written, this book brings the eighteenth century to life, presenting a diverse range of material from serious religious poems to amusing verses on domestic life. The work of Anne Finch, author of A Nocturnal Reverie, provides the cornerstone for this well informed study. But it was Elizabeth Rowe who achieved international fame for her popular religious writings. Both women influenced the Countess of Hertford, who wrote about the beauty of nature, centuries before modern Earth Day celebrations. Sarah Dixon, a middle-class writer from Kent, had a strong moral outlook and stood up for those whose voices needed to be heard, including her own. Finally, Mary Jones, who lived in Oxford, was praised for both her genius and her sense of humor. Poetic Sisters presents a fascinating female literary network, revealing the bonds of a shared vocation that unites these writers. It also traces their literary afterlife from the eighteenth century to the present day, with references to contemporary culture, demonstrating how their work resonates with new generations of readers. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Philanthropic Discourse in Anglo-American Literature, 1850–1920 Frank Q. Christianson, Leslee Thorne-Murphy, 2017-10-19 “Offers . . . a clearer insight into the scope and function of philanthropy in political and private life and the impacts that women writers and activists had.” —Edith Wharton Review From the mid-nineteenth century until the rise of the modern welfare state in the early twentieth century, Anglo-American philanthropic giving gained an unprecedented measure of cultural authority as it changed in kind and degree. Civil society took on the responsibility for confronting the adverse effects of industrialism, and transnational discussions of poverty, urbanization, and women’s work, and sympathy provided a means of understanding and debating social reform. While philanthropic institutions left a transactional record of money and materials, philanthropic discourse yielded a rich corpus of writing that represented, rationalized, and shaped these rapidly industrializing societies, drawing on and informing other modernizing discourses including religion, economics, and social science. Showing the fundamentally transatlantic nature of this discourse from 1850 to 1920, the authors gather a wide variety of literary sources that crossed national and colonial borders within the Anglo-American range of influence. Through manifestos, fundraising tracts, novels, letters, and pamphlets, they piece together the intellectual world where philanthropists reasoned through their efforts and redefined the public sector. |
| 1850 literature and writers: A Race of Female Patriots Brett D. Wilson, 2012 A Race of Female Patriots is a study of tragic drama after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that yields new insight into women's involvement in the public sphere and the political and aesthetic significance of feeling. |
| 1850 literature and writers: The Tramp in British Literature, 1850—1950 Luke Lewin Davies, 2022-01-01 Shortlisted for the Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize 2022, The Tramp in British Literature, 1850-1950 offers a unique account of the emergence of a new conception of homelessness in the mid-nineteenth century. After arguing that the emergence of the figure of the tramp reflects the evolution of capitalism and disciplinary society in this period, The Tramp in British Literature uncovers a neglected body of tramp literature written by memoir and fiction writers, many of whom were themselves homeless. In analysing these works, it presents select texts as a unique and ignored contribution to a wider radical discourse defined by its opposition to a wider societal preoccupation with the need to be productive. |
| 1850 literature and writers: The Origins of African American Literature, 1680-1865 Dickson D. Bruce, 2001 From the earliest texts of the colonial period to works contemporary with Emancipation, African American literature has been a dialogue across color lines, and a medium through which black writers have been able to exert considerable authority on both sides of that racial demarcation. Dickson D. Bruce argues that contrary to prevailing perceptions of African American voices as silenced and excluded from American history, those voices were loud and clear. Within the context of the wider culture, these writers offered powerful, widely read, and widely appreciated commentaries on American ideals and ambitions. The Origins of African American Literature provides strong evidence to demonstrate just how much writers engaged in a surprising number of dialogues with society as a whole. Along with an extensive discussion of major authors and texts, including Phillis Wheatley's poetry, Frederick Douglass's Narrative, Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Martin Delany's Blake, Bruce explores less-prominent works and writers as well, thereby grounding African American writing in its changing historical settings. The Origins of African American Literature is an invaluable revelation of the emergence and sources of the specifically African American literary tradition and the forces that helped shape it. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Effeminate Years Declan Kavanagh, 2017-06-23 Effeminate Years: Literature, Politics, and Aesthetics in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain investigates the gendered, eroticized, and xenophobic ways in which the controversies in the 1760s surrounding the political figure John Wilkes (1725-97) legitimated some men as political subjects, while forcefully excluding others on the basis of their perceived effeminacy or foreignness. However, this book is not a literary analysis of the Wilkes affair in the 1760s, nor is it a linear account of Wilkes’s political career. Instead, Effeminate Years examines the cultural crisis of effeminacy that made Wilkes’s politicking so appealing. The central theoretical problem that this study addresses is the argument about what is and is not political: where does individual autonomy begin and end? Addressing this question, Kavanagh traces the shaping influence of the discourse of effeminacy in the literature that was generated by Wilkes’s legal and sexual scandals, while, at the same time, he also reads Wilkes’s spectacular drumming up of support as a timely exploitation of the broader cultural crisis of effeminacy during the mid century in Britain. The book begins with the scandals and agitations surrounding Wilkes, and ends with readings of Edmund Burke’s (1729-1797) earliest political writings, which envisage political community—a vision, that Kavanagh argues, is influenced by Wilkes and the effeminate years of the 1760s. Throughout, Kavanagh shows how interlocutors in the political and cultural debates of the mid-eighteenth-century period in Britain, such as Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) and Arthur Murphy (1727-1805), attempt to resolve the problem of effeminate excess. In part, the resolution for Wilkes and Charles Churchill (1731-1764) was to shunt effeminacy onto the sexually non-normative. On the other hand, Burke, in his aesthetic theorization of the beautiful privileges the socially constitutive affects of feeling effeminate. Through an analysis of poetry, fiction, social and economic pamphlets, aesthetic treatises, journalism and correspondences, placed within the latest queer historiography, Kavanagh demonstrates that the mid-century effeminacy crisis served to re-conceive male heterosexuality as the very mark of political legitimacy. Overall, Effeminate Years explores the development of modern ideas of masculinity and the political subject, which are still the basis of debate and argument in our own time. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question Nicola Diane Thompson, 1999-07 This book was first published in 1999. This collection of essays by leading scholars from Britain, the USA and Canada opens up the limited landscape of Victorian novels by focusing attention on some of the women writers popular in their own time but forgotten or neglected by literary history. Spanning the entire Victorian period, this study investigates particularly the role and treatment of 'the woman question' in the second half of the century. There are discussions of marriage, matriarchy and divorce, satire, suffragette writing, writing for children, and links between literature and art. Moving from Margaret Oliphant and Charlotte Mary Yonge to Mary Ward, Marie Corelli, 'Ouida' and E. Nesbit, this book illuminates the complex cultural and literary roles, and the engaging contributions, of Victorian women writers. |
| 1850 literature and writers: The Undergraduate's Companion to American Writers and Their Web Sites Larry G. Hinman, 2000-12-15 An outstanding research guide for undergraduate students of American literature, this best-selling book is essential when it comes to researching American authors. Bracken and Hinman identify and describe the best and most current sources, both in print and online, for nearly 300 American writers whose works are included in the most frequently used literary anthologies. Students will know exactly what information is available and where to find it. |
| 1850 literature and writers: 1650-1850 Kevin L. Cope, 2019-04-01 With issue twenty-four of 1650–1850, this annual enters its second quarter-century with a new publisher, a new look, a new editorial board, and a new commitment to intellectual and artistic exploration. As the diversely inventive essays in this first issue from the Bucknell University Press demonstrate, the energy and open-mindedness that made 1650–1850 a success continue to intensify. This first Bucknell issue includes a special feature that explores the use of sacred space in what was once incautiously called “the age of reason.” A suite of book reviews renews the 1650–1850 legacy of full-length and unbridled evaluation of the best in contemporary Enlightenment scholarship. These lively and informative reviews celebrate the many years that book review editor Baerbel Czennia has served 1650–1850 and also make for an able handoff to Samara Anne Cahill of Nanyang Technological University, who will edit the book review section beginning with our next volume. Most important of all, this issue serves as an invitation to scholars to offer their most creative and thoughtful work for consideration for publication in 1650–1850. About the annual journal 1650-1850 1650-1850 publishes essays and reviews from and about a wide range of academic disciplines—literature (both in English and other languages), philosophy, art history, history, religion, and science. Interdisciplinary in scope and approach, 1650-1850 emphasizes aesthetic manifestations and applications of ideas, and encourages studies that move between the arts and the sciences—between the “hard” and the “humane” disciplines. The editors encourage proposals for “special features” that bring together five to seven essays on focused themes within its historical range, from the Interregnum to the end of the first generation of Romantic writers. While also being open to more specialized or particular studies that match up with the general themes and goals of the journal, 1650-1850 is in the first instance a journal about the artful presentation of ideas that welcomes good writing from its contributors. First published in 1994, 1650-1850 is currently in its 24th volume. ISSN 1065-3112. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Victorian Publishing Alexis Weedon, 2017-03-02 Drawing on research into the book-production records of twelve publishers-including George Bell & Son, Richard Bentley, William Blackwood, Chatto & Windus, Oliver & Boyd, Macmillan, and the book printers William Clowes and T&A Constable - taken at ten-year intervals from 1836 to 1916, this book interprets broad trends in the growth and diversity of book publishing in Victorian Britain. Chapters explore the significance of the export trade to the colonies and the rising importance of towns outside London as centres of publishing; the influence of technological change in increasing the variety and quantity of books; and how the business practice of literary publishing developed to expand the market for British and American authors. The book takes examples from the purchase and sale of popular fiction by Ouida, Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Ewing, and canonical authors such as George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, and Mark Twain. Consideration of the unique demands of the educational market complements the focus on fiction, as readers, arithmetic books, music, geography, science textbooks, and Greek and Latin classics became a staple for an increasing number of publishing houses wishing to spread the risk of novel publication. |
| 1850 literature and writers: German Women as Letter Writers, 1750-1850 Lorely French, 1996 In working through her letters for publication, Arnim stressed a communicative, dialogic relationship in which literature, history, and art coalesce into a highly personal form. The final chapter offers an overview of letters that address political concerns. Louise Aston, Fanny Lewald, Emma Herwegh, and Mathilde Franziska Anneke all used letters in their publications concerning the 1848 Revolution, thereby fusing literature with the historical essay and radically expanding traditional genre definitions and canons. |
| 1850 literature and writers: The Poems of Charlotte Smith Charlotte Smith, 1993-12-09 Charlotte Smith (1749-1806) was the author of ten novels, a play, and a host of innovative educational books for children, as well as several volumes of poetry that helped set priorities and determine the tastes of the culture of early Romanticism. Her Elegiac Sonnets sparked the sonnet revival in English Romanticism; The Emigrants initiated its passion for lengthy meditative introspection; and Beachy Head lent its poetic engagement with nature a uniquely telling immediacy. Smith was a woman, Wordsworth remarked a quarter century after her death, to whom English verse is under greater obligations than are likely to be either acknowledged or remembered. True to his prediction, Smith's poetry has virtually dropped from sight and thus from cultural consciousness. This, the first edition of Smith's collected poems, will restore to all students of English poetry a distinctive, compelling voice. Likewise, the recovery of Smith to her rightful place among the Romantic poets must spur the reassessment of the place of women writers within that culture. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Voices from the Asylum Susannah Wilson, 2010-10-21 Straddling the disciplines of literature and social history, and based on extensive archival research, this book makes a crucial contribution to the feminist project of writing women back into literary history. It brings to light the hitherto unrecognised literary tradition in the prehistory of psychoanalysis: the psychiatric memoir. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Loving Literature Deidre Shauna Lynch, 2014-12-22 One of the most common—and wounding—misconceptions about literary scholars today is that they simply don’t love books. While those actually working in literary studies can easily refute this claim, such a response risks obscuring a more fundamental question: why should they? That question led Deidre Shauna Lynch into the historical and cultural investigation of Loving Literature. How did it come to be that professional literary scholars are expected not just to study, but to love literature, and to inculcate that love in generations of students? What Lynch discovers is that books, and the attachments we form to them, have played a vital role in the formation of private life—that the love of literature, in other words, is deeply embedded in the history of literature. Yet at the same time, our love is neither self-evident nor ahistorical: our views of books as objects of affection have clear roots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century publishing, reading habits, and domestic history. While never denying the very real feelings that warm our relationship to books, Loving Literature nonetheless serves as a riposte to those who use the phrase “the love of literature” as if its meaning were transparent. Lynch writes, “It is as if those on the side of love of literature had forgotten what literary texts themselves say about love’s edginess and complexities.” With this masterly volume, Lynch restores those edges and allows us to revel in those complexities. |
| 1850 literature and writers: Slavery and Sentiment Christine Levecq, 2008 Illuminates the political dimensions of American and British antislavery texts written by blacks |
1850 - Wikipedia
1850 (MDCCCL) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar, the 1850th year of the Common Era …
U.S. Timeline - The 1850s - America's Best History
January 29, 1850 - Debate on the future of slavery in the territories escalates when Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress. On March 7, Senator Daniel …
Historical Events in 1850 - On This Day
Historical events from year 1850. Learn about 67 famous, scandalous and important events that happened in 1850 or search by date or keyword.
1850 Census Records | National Archives
May 13, 2024 · The 1850 population census was the Seventh Decennial Census of the United States. Taken every 10 years since 1790, census records provide a snapshot of the nation's …
Compromise of 1850 - Summary, Significance & Facts - HISTORY
Oct 27, 2009 · The Compromise of 1850 was made up of five bills that attempted to resolve disputes over slavery in new territories added to the United States in the wake of the Mexican …
1850 Census: The Seventh Census of the United States
Jun 5, 2025 · This 1850 Census publication contains population data, and data pertaining to agriculture, schools and colleges, libraries, and churches, among other topics.
Historic Timeline From 1850 to 1860 - ThoughtCo
1850 January 29: The Compromise of 1850 was introduced in the U.S. Congress. The legislation would eventually pass and be highly controversial, but it essentially delayed the Civil War by a …
What Happened in 1850 in the United States? - FamilySearch
Apr 12, 2022 · What happened in 1850 and the following decade? Examine the cultural shifts, inventions, and notable contributions as the United States expanded westward.
What happened in 1850 in american history? - California Learning ...
Jan 4, 2025 · 1850 was a defining year in American history, marked by significant developments that would shape the course of the country. The California Gold Rush, the Compromise of …
Compromise of 1850 - World History Encyclopedia
Jun 9, 2025 · The Compromise of 1850 was a series of five bills passed by the US Congress in September 1850 to diffuse a sectional crisis brewing between the 'free states' of the North and …
1850 - Wikipedia
1850 (MDCCCL) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar, the 1850th year of the Common Era …
U.S. Timeline - The 1850s - America's Best History
January 29, 1850 - Debate on the future of slavery in the territories escalates when Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress. On March 7, Senator Daniel …
Historical Events in 1850 - On This Day
Historical events from year 1850. Learn about 67 famous, scandalous and important events that happened in 1850 or search by date or keyword.
1850 Census Records | National Archives
May 13, 2024 · The 1850 population census was the Seventh Decennial Census of the United States. Taken every 10 years since 1790, census records provide a snapshot of the nation's …
Compromise of 1850 - Summary, Significance & Facts - HISTORY
Oct 27, 2009 · The Compromise of 1850 was made up of five bills that attempted to resolve disputes over slavery in new territories added to the United States in the wake of the Mexican …
1850 Census: The Seventh Census of the United States
Jun 5, 2025 · This 1850 Census publication contains population data, and data pertaining to agriculture, schools and colleges, libraries, and churches, among other topics.
Historic Timeline From 1850 to 1860 - ThoughtCo
1850 January 29: The Compromise of 1850 was introduced in the U.S. Congress. The legislation would eventually pass and be highly controversial, but it essentially delayed the Civil War by a …
What Happened in 1850 in the United States? - FamilySearch
Apr 12, 2022 · What happened in 1850 and the following decade? Examine the cultural shifts, inventions, and notable contributions as the United States expanded westward.
What happened in 1850 in american history? - California Learning ...
Jan 4, 2025 · 1850 was a defining year in American history, marked by significant developments that would shape the course of the country. The California Gold Rush, the Compromise of …
Compromise of 1850 - World History Encyclopedia
Jun 9, 2025 · The Compromise of 1850 was a series of five bills passed by the US Congress in September 1850 to diffuse a sectional crisis brewing between the 'free states' of the North and …
