Anne Brontë1819-1849 wrote more than her sister Emily, but with less of recognition. She contributed verses to the little volume of poems under the name of Acton Bell, and additional verses were published after her death by Charlotte. In addition to this she wrote two novels, the first of them "Agnes Grey," and the second "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall." This last, curiously enough, went into a second edition during Anne's lifetime, and she contributed a preface to it defending herself against her critics. Neither Anne's poetry nor her novels are of any account to-day. They would not be read, were it not for the glory with which her two sisters have surrounded the name of Brontë.
Women novelists have abundantly flourished during the Victorian Era, but then the path was made easy for them by Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, and Fanny Burney. By all those who delight in debatable comparisons the name of George Eliot is frequently brought into contrast with that of Charlotte Brontë. George Eliot1819-1880 was born at Griff in Warwickshire, her real name being Mary Ann Evans. She was for a time at a school at Nuneaton, and afterwards at Coventry. At first she was an evangelical churchwoman, but about 1842 she became acquainted with two or three cultivated women friends at whose houses she met Froude, Emerson, and Francis Newman, all of whom represented a reverent antagonism to supernatural Christianity. In conjunction with Sarah Hennell, she undertook a translation of Strauss's "Life of Jesus." On her father's death, in 1849, she came to London and became associated with Dr Chapman in the editorship of the Westminster Review. It was her friendship with George Henry Lewes, whom she met in 1851, which gave her the first impulse towards fiction. Lewes was an active critic, and a writer of two now forgotten novels. Miss Evans's "Scenes of Clerical Life" were sent to Blackwood's Magazine in 1856. The stories were a great success. Thackeray and Dickens were loud in expressions of admiration. In 1859 "Adam Bede" was published and made George Eliot famous. "It is the finest thing since Shakspere," said Charles Reade. Her success, however, did not lead to hasty production. She wrote only six novels during the remainder of her life. "I can write no word that is not prompted from within," she said. "The Mill on the Floss" was written in 1860; "Silas Marner" in 1861; "Romola" in 1863; "Felix Holt" in 1866; "Middlemarch" in 1871-1872; and "Daniel Deronda" in 1876.
In 1880 Miss Mary Ann Evans became Mrs Walter Cross, but after a few months of wedded life she died of inflammation of the heart at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. Her husband wrote her biography, not with much success. So entirely was George Eliot's best mind concentrated upon her books that her letters, and indeed her personality, were a disappointment to all but a few hero-worshippers.
The novels, with two volumes of poems and two of essays, make up George Eliot's collected works. The essays written before and after her novels give, like her letters, but few indications of her remarkable powers. Nor, although "The Spanish Gipsy" is deeply interesting, can her poetry be counted for much. "The Choir Invisible" is her best known poem. It is by her novels that she must be judged, and these, for insight into character, analysis of the motives which guide men, and sympathy with the intellectual and moral struggles which make up so large a part of life, have a literary niche to themselves. With singular catholicity she paints the simplest faith and the highest idealism. Whether it be an Evangelical clergyman, a Dissenting minister, or a Methodist factory-girl, she enters into the spirit of their lives with fullest sympathy. Carlyle could see in Methodism only "a religion fit for gross and vulgar-minded people, a religion so-called, and the essence of it cowardice and hunger, terror of pain and appetite for pleasure both carried to the infinite." George Eliot's sympathies were wider. She won the heart of Methodists, who have stood in imagination listening to Dinah Morris addressing the Hayslope peasantry, as she gained the devotion of Roman Catholics like Lord Acton, who have seen in her portrait of Savonarola a wise expression of their faith. And it is not only in religious matters that her sympathies are so broad. The sententious dulness of Mr Macey is as much within the range of her feelings as the manliness of Adam Bede or the scholastic pride of old Bardo. She feels equally for the weak and frivolous Hetty and the lofty, self-sustained Romola. "At least eighty out of a hundred," she says, "of your adult male fellow-Britons returned in the last census are neither extraordinarily silly nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. They are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is more or less bald and disjointed. Yet these commonplace people—many of them—bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime promptings to do the painful right; they have their unspoken sorrows and their sacred joys; their hearts have perhaps gone out towards their first-born, and they have mourned over the irreclaimable dead. Nay, is there not a pathos in their very insignificance, in our comparison of their dim and narrow existence with the glorious possibilities of that human nature which they share? Depend upon it you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull gray eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones." The creations of George Eliot,—Tito and Baldassare, Mrs Poyser and Silas Marner, Dorothy Brooke and Gwendolen,—are not as familiar to the reading public of to-day as they were to that of ten or fifteen years ago. Of the idolatry which almost made her a prophetess of a new cult we hear nothing now. She has not maintained her position as Dickens, Thackeray, and Charlotte Brontë have maintained theirs. But if there be little of partisanship and much detraction, it is idle to deny that George Eliot's many gifts, her humour, her pathos, her remarkable intellectual endowments, give her an assured place among the writers of Victorian literature.
The next in order of prominence among the novelists of the period is Charles Kingsley1819-1875. He was born at Holne Vicarage, on the borders of Dartmoor, and was educated at King's College, London, and Magdalen College, Cambridge. After this he received the curacy of Eversley, in Hampshire, of which parish he finally became rector. In 1848 he published a drama entitled "The Saint's Tragedy," with St Elizabeth of Hungary as heroine. A year later his novel of "Alton Locke" gained him the title of "The Chartist Parson." This tale, in which Carlyle is introduced in the person of an old Scotch bookseller, was a crude and yet vigorous expression of sympathy with the Chartist movement, and its influence was tremendous. For its sympathy with the working classes, and in its reflection of the broad and tolerant Christianity of which Kingsley was always the eloquent preacher, "Alton Locke," in common with "Yeast" and "Two Years Ago," is a valuable contribution to literature. Kingsley, however, became a truer artist when, as in "Hypatia" and "Westward Ho!" he had not social and religious ends in view. "Hypatia," in spite of many historical errors, is a brilliant sketch of the early Church at Alexandria. Gibbon, from whom Kingsley obtained the hint for this book, would have revelled in the apparent endorsement by a latter-day clergyman of his estimate of the early Christianity of the East. "Westward Ho!" is a picturesque narrative of English rivalry with Spain in the reign of Elizabeth. The contrasts of character in Frank and Amyas Leigh perhaps give this novel a claim to be considered Kingsley's best effort. He wrote many other works, including children's stories, scientific lectures, and poems, among which last the beautiful ballads, "The Three Fishers" and "The Sands of Dee," are the most popular. For nine years he held the office of Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, but his unphilosophical views of history made his presence there a misfortune. A model country clergyman, a man essentially healthy-minded and interested in all phases of life and thought, Kingsley's influence, especially on young men, during the past five-and-thirty years, has been very great and very beneficial.
Henry Kingsley1830-1876, a younger brother of Charles, wrote many novels and romances, three of them memorable. "Geoffrey Hamlyn" is popular as the best novel of Australian life. To Australia he had gone to make his fortune at the diggings. He did not make a fortune, but joined the colonial mounted police instead. Compelled by his office to attend an execution, he threw up the post in disgust, and returned to England to find his brother installed as Vicar of Eversley and on the high road to fame. Little wonder that he attempted to emulate him, and he succeeded.
Never, surely, has literature produced two brothers so remarkable, and at the same time so different. Both gave us energetic heroes, and loved manliness. In Charles Kingsley, however, the novelist was always largely subordinated to the preacher. In Henry there was nothing of the preacher whatever. "Geoffrey Hamlyn," "Ravenshoe" and "The Hillyars and The Burtons," are all forcible, effective works, and they have secured generous praise and appreciation from many a literary colleague. But Henry was a bit of a ne'er-do-well, and so his personality has been carefully screened from the public. His name is not even mentioned in Charles Kingsley's biography. Sir Edwin Arnold, however, who knew him at Oxford, and Mrs Thackeray Ritchie, who knew him towards the end of his life, testify to certain delightful qualities of mind and heart which peculiarly appealed to them.[8]
A writer not less successful than Charles Kingsley, but in no way comparable as a man, was Edward Bulwer Lytton1803-1873, Baron Lytton, who was born in London, and created no small sensation in 1828 by the publication of "Pelham." This was followed by a long list of novels of infinite variety. Some dealt with the preternatural like "Zanoni," and others with history, psychology, and ethics. Of these the most popular were doubtless the historical "Harold," "Rienzi," "The Last of the Barons," and "The Last Days of Pompeii," which still hold their own with the younger generation. The thoughtful men of to-day do not however read "The Caxtons" as they did in the sixties and seventies. Lytton was one of the cleverest men of his age—using the word in no friendly sense—he was a clever novelist, a clever dramatist (his comedy of "Money," and his tragedies "Richelieu" and "The Lady of Lyons," still hold the stage), and a clever Parliamentary debater.
Another writer, with higher claims to consideration than those of literature, was Benjamin Disraeli1804-1881, Earl of Beaconsfield. Disraeli entered life under conditions peculiarly favourable to a successful literary career. His father, Isaac D'Israeli, was an enthusiastic bookworm, whose "Curiosities of Literature" and other books are an inexhaustible mine of anecdote on the quarrels and calamities of authors. The young Disraeli wrote "Vivian Grey" in 1827, following this very successful effort with "The Young Duke," "Venetia," "Henrietta Temple," and other novels. In 1837 he was returned to Parliament as member for Maidstone. His career as an orator and statesman does not concern us here; suffice to say that of his many later novels "Coningsby," "Tancred," and "Sybil" are by far the ablest and most brilliant, and that "Sybil" was an effective exposure of many abuses in the relations of capital to labour. In addition to his work as a novelist, Lord Beaconsfield wrote an able biography of his friend and colleague, Lord George Bentinck.
One of the most successful of the greater novelists of the reign was Charles Reade1814-1884, who first became famous by "Peg Woffington" in 1852. "The Cloister and the Hearth" was published in 1861, and "Griffith Gaunt" in 1866. Several of his later novels were written "with a purpose." In "Hard Cash" he drew attention to the abuses of private lunatic asylums; in "Foul Play" he aroused public interest in the iniquities of ship-knackers; in "Put Yourself in His Place," he attacked Trades Unions, and in "Never Too Late to Mend" he exposed some of the abuses of our prison system as it existed at that time. Reade was also an industrious dramatist; "Masks and Faces," and "Drink," are among his most popular plays. Of all his books "The Cloister and the Hearth" is the best, and also the most widely read. It has for its hero the father of Erasmus.