Our study of Victorian literature includes (1) The life and works of the two greater poets of the age, Tennyson and Browning. (2) The work of Elizabeth Barrett, Matthew Arnold, Rossetti, Morris and Swinburne, who were selected from the two hundred representive poets of the period. (3) The life and the chief works of the major novelists, Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot. (4) A review of some other novelists of the age, the Brontë Sisters, Mrs. Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, Blackmore, Kingsley, Meredith, Hardy and Stevenson. (5) The typical essayists and historians, Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, with a review of other typical groups of writers in the fields of religion, history and science.
SELECTIONS FOR READING. Typical selections from all authors named in the text are found in Manly, English Poetry, English Prose; Pancoast, Standard English Poems, Standard English Prose; and several other collections, which are especially useful in a study of the minor writers. The works of the major authors may be read to much better advantage in various inexpensive editions prepared for school use. Only a few such editions are named below for each author, but a fairly complete list is given under Texts in the General Bibliography.
Tennyson's selected minor poems, Idylls of the King, The Princess and In Memoriam, in Standard English Classics, Riverside Literature, Pocket Classics, Silver Classics. A good volume containing the best of Tennyson's poems in Athenæum Press Series.
Browning and Mrs. Browning, selected poems in Standard English
Classics, Lake Classics, English Readings, Belles Lettres Series.
Matthew Arnold, selected poems in Golden Treasury Series, Maynard's
English Classics; Sohrab and Rustum in Standard English Classics;
prose selections in English Readings, Academy Classics.
Dickens, Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Christmas Carol in
Standard English Classics, Lake Classics; other novels in
Everyman's Library.
Thackeray, Henry Esmond in Standard English Classics, Pocket
Classics; English Humorists in Lake Classics, English Readings;
other works in Everyman's Library.
George Eliot, Silas Marner, in Standard English Classics, Riverside
Literature; Mill on the Floss and other novels in Everyman's
Library.
Blackmore's Lorna Doone and Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford in Standard
English Classics. Reade's Cloister and the Hearth, Kingsley's
Westward Ho and Hypatia in Everyman's Library.
Macaulay, selected essays in Standard English Classics, Riverside
Literature, Lake Classics.