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19th Century Literature

What happened in the West during the 19th century was pretty much what you'd expect from a society whose religious and philosophical foundations had been shaken to the root after centuries of overt Christian influence. There were basically three possible responses: to reject Christianity and accept the new humanism wholesale; to try to maintain a balance between the two; or, to maintain complete allegiance to the Christian faith and defend it against the growing number of anti-Christian ideas.

Unfortunately, those in the latter group often reverted to a simple anti-intellectualism that, far from upholding a solid Christian worldview, undermined the faith to which they so desperately clung. Those who didn't go to that extreme often went to another—in their attempt to remain intellectually relevant, many Christian writers and thinkers began to embrace the increasingly unchristian ideas surfacing, and try to collate them with orthodox doctrine. It was a confusing time, and the lines of Christian culture and secular culture began to blur in increasingly bizarre ways.

For one thing, theologians began to adopt the view that science and faith were separate realms, and that each had its own realm of authority on which the other could not infringe. Charles Darwin's theory of general evolution was obviously instrumental in fostering this idea, but other forward strides in practical science like the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution, improvements in medical knowledge, and a growing sense that only what could be observed was "real" were just as influential.

It all went back to Progress, really. The Enlightenment ideal of man's interminable forward movement through the centuries meant that things were getting better, and with things demonstrably getting better it was hard for many to argue. Because many of the philosophical ideas that accompanied scientific progress were rooted in humanism rather than Christianity, people assumed the two were incompatible to some degree, and to be reconciled they had to be separated.

Not everyone was happily devoted to Progress, however. One of the 19th century's dominant literary movements was devoted to the opposite. Romanticism was as much a child of the Enlightenment as scientism, but instead of going forward they grasped Rousseau's idea that man is at his best when at his most natural, and went backward. Or tried—praising nature, deriding civilization and technology, and pursuing free love is easier evoked in poetry than practiced in real life, as its leaders soon discovered. Still, men like Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge left behind some of the greatest verse ever written.

The Victorians were certainly influenced by Romanticism and the Enlightenment, but they were a little more balanced. Writers like Charles Dickens (possibly the greatest novelist of all time) and William Makepeace Thackeray combined Christian themes, satire, social activism and a heightened aesthetic sense to simultaneously comment on and delight the culture at large. In many ways the novel came into its own during this period, though some of its best practitioners were still 50-100 years in the future.

In the New World a particularly American version of Romanticism took hold. Transcendentalism as espoused by Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau was less organized than its Continental counterpart. It was also less rooted in Western tradition, at least, in the Classical Western tradition; the Transcendentalists preferred biblical symbolism, particularly the Old Testament with its often unsettling and apocalyptic imagery.

No era can claim a single literary or intellectual trajectory, but each phase in human history has its own zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. For the 19th century it was the final shift of authority away from any Divine source and onto the shoulders of man. There were great Christian writers who tried to stem the tide (Robert Browning, R. L. Dabney, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and Charles Ryrie come readily to mind), but secular man was having his heyday and mostly prevailed in the public sphere.

Without the 19th century we wouldn't have most of the fiction genres we enjoy now. Mystery and detective fiction, science fiction, fantasy, escapist adventure novels, realistic historical fiction, etc., all came into being between the beginning of the French Republic and the founding of Major League Baseball. Whatever your opinion of the ideas rampant in these works, these are some of the best philosophical treatises, novels, poems, short stories, and essays history has to offer.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he's a husband and father who loves church, good food, and weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.
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Active Filters: North American Literature, Hardcover
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
from Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Mark Twain, illustrated by Paul Geiger
from Reader's Digest
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Ambassadors
by Henry James
from Heritage Press
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
American Claimant / Pudd'nhead Wilson
from Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.00 (2 in stock)
Annotated Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
from W. W. Norton and Co.
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
from Paul S. Eriksson, INC.
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Ben-Hur
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Lew Wallace
from Reader's Digest
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Ben-Hur
by Lew Wallace
from Heritage Press
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Ben-Hur
by Lew Wallace
from Harper & Brothers
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Bold Dragoon
by Washington Irving, illustrated by James Daugherty
1960 printing from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 6th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable
by Thomas Bulfinch
from International Collectors Library
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable
by Thomas Bulfinch, illustrated by Stanley William Hayter
from Heritage Press
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Bulfinch's Mythology: The Complete Texts
by Thomas Bulfinch
from Gramercy Books
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Celebrated Jumping Frog and Other Stories
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Mark Twain
from Reader's Digest
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00 (2 in stock)
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
by Mark Twain, illustrated by Harold Berson
from Franklin Watts
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe
from Modern Library
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$25.00
Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe
from Barnes & Noble
for 8th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Complete Tales of Uncle Remus
by Joel Chandler Harris
from Houghton Mifflin
Animal Fantasy for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Complete Tales of Uncle Remus
by Joel Chandler Harris, retold by Julius Lester, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
from Dial Press
Animal Fantasy for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$50.00
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Mark Twain
from Reader's Digest
Social Satire/Comedy for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
by Mark Twain
from International Collectors Library
Social Satire/Comedy for 8th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Signet Classics
by Mark Twain
from New American Library
Social Satire/Humor for 8th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
by Mark Twain, illustrated by Honore Guilbeau
from Heritage Press
Social Satire/Comedy for 8th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Deerslayer
Leatherstocking Tales #1
by James Fenimore Cooper, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth
from Atheneum
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Deerslayer
Leatherstocking Tales #1
by James Fenimore Cooper, illustrated by Louis Rhead & Frank Schoonover
from Blue Ribbon Books, Inc.
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$14.00 (1 in stock)
Deerslayer
Leatherstocking Tales #1
by James Fenimore Cooper, illustrated by Edward A. Wilson
from Heritage Press
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
ECL: Adventures of Tom Sawyer
by Mark Twain, illustrated by Al Davidson
from BiblioLife
for 4th-8th grade
in Educator Classic Library (Location: VIN-ECL)
Emily Dickinson On Love
by Emily Dickinson
from Barnes & Noble
for 7th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
Ghostly Tales and Eerie Poems
Illustrated Junior Library Series 4
by Edgar Allan Poe
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Ghostly Tales and Eerie Poems
Illustrated Junior Library Series 3
by Edgar Allan Poe
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Gilded Age
by Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner
from Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Henry David Thoreau
by Henry David Thoreau, illustrated by James Daugherty
from Viking Press
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
House of the Seven Gables
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from International Collectors Library
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
House of the Seven Gables
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Reprint from Reader's Digest
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
House of the Seven Gables
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from Houghton Mifflin
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Illustrated Bulfinch's Mythology: Age of Fable
by Thomas Bulfinch
from Macmillan
for 6th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Illustrated Bulfinch's Mythology: Legends of Charlemagne
by Thomas Bulfinch
from Macmillan
for 6th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
In His Steps
by Charles Monroe Sheldon
from Hendrickson Publishers
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.50 (1 in stock)
Innocents Abroad
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Mark Twain
from Reader's Digest
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Last of the Mohicans
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by James Fenimore Cooper
from Reader's Digest
Realistic Action/Adventure Novel for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Last of the Mohicans
Leatherstocking Tales #2
by James Fenimore Cooper, illustrated by Edward A. Wilson
from Heritage Press
Realistic Action/Adventure Novel for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Last of the Mohicans
Leatherstocking Tales #2
by James Fenimore Cooper, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Realistic Action/Adventure Novel for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Last of the Mohicans
Leatherstocking Tales #2
by James Fenimore Cooper
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Realistic Action/Adventure Novel for 9th-Adult
in Scribner Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SCRIB)
$24.99
Last of the Mohicans
Leatherstocking Tales #2
by James Fenimore Cooper
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Realistic Action/Adventure Novel for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Last of the Mohicans
Leatherstocking Tales #2
by James Fenimore Cooper, illustrated by James Daugherty
Realistic Action/Adventure Novel for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
from Modern Library
for 10th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Washington Irving
from Reader's Digest
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00 (2 in stock)
Life on the Mississippi
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Mark Twain
from Reader's Digest
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Little Men
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Louisa May Alcott
from Reader's Digest
for 4th-9th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Moby-Dick
Everyman's Library
by Herman Melville
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Realistic Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$35.00
Moby-Dick
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Herman Melville
from Reader's Digest
Realistic Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Moby-Dick
Macmillan Classics
by Herman Melville, illustrated by Robert Shore
from Macmillan
Realistic Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Moby-Dick
Calla Editions
by Herman Melville
from Dover Publications
Realistic Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Moby-Dick
Modern Library
by Herman Melville
from Modern Library
Realistic Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Monk and the Hangman's Daughter
by Ambrose Bierce
from Heritage Press
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Oregon Trail
by Francis Parkman, Jr., illustrated by Frederic Remington
1993 printing from Little, Brown & Company
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Oregon Trail
by Francis Parkman, Jr., illustrated by Maynard Dixon
from Heritage Press
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
Oregon Trail
by Francis Parkman
from International Collectors Library
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Oregon Trail
Famous Books for Young Americans
by Francis Parkman
from A. L. Burt Company
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.50 (1 in stock)
Portrait of a Lady
by Henry James
from Heritage Press
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Prairie
Leatherstocking Tales #5
by J. Fenimore Cooper
Trade Paperback Edition from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$15.00
Prince and the Pauper
Portland House Illustrated Classics
by Mark Twain, illustrated by Franklin Booth
from Portland House
Historical Fiction for 5th-9th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Prince and the Pauper
by Mark Twain, illustrated by Frank Merrill
from Reader's Digest
for 8th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Ramona
by Helen Jackson
from Little, Brown & Company
for 9th-12th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$14.00 (1 in stock)
Red Badge of Courage
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Stephen Crane
from Reader's Digest
for 7th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Red Badge of Courage
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Stephen Crane
from Reader's Digest
for 7th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Roughing It
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Mark Twain
from Reader's Digest
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Scarlet Letter
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from Reader's Digest
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Scarlet Letter
International Collectors Library
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from International Collectors Library
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from Franklin Library
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Scarlet Letter
Portland House Illustrated Classics
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, illustrated by Hugh Thomson
from Portland House
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Selected Western Stories and Poems
by Bret Harte
from Walter J. Black, Inc.
for 9th-Adult
in Walter J. Black Classics Club (Location: VIN-LITWJB)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Song of Hiawatha and Other Poems
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, illustrated by Frederic Remington, Howard Chandler Christy, et al
from Reader's Digest
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
Spy
by James Fenimore Cooper
from Heritage Press
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Spy
by James Fenimore Cooper
from Junior Deluxe Editions
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Story Cube Collection
by Stephen Crane
from Gamewright Games
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated by Russell Hoban, afterword by Clifton Fadiman
4th printing, 1967 from Macmillan
for 8th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Calla Editions
by Edgar Allan Poe
from Dover Publications
for 7th-12th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Portland House Illustrated Classics
by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated by Arthur Rackham
from Portland House
for 7th-12th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Tales of O. Henry
from International Collectors Library
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Tales of the Alhambra
by Washington Irving
3rd edition from Club Everest
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
The Pilot
Great Illustrated Classics
by James Fenimore Cooper
from Dodd, Mead & Co.
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Tom Sawyer Abroad
by Mark Twain
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 7th-Adult
in Companion Library (Location: VIN-FIC)
Tom Sawyer Abroad
by Mark Twain
from SeaWolf Press
for 7th-Adult
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
$6.95
Tom Sawyer Abroad and Other Stories
by Mark Twain
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 7th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Twice Told Tales
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from Heritage Press
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Twice-Told Tales
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
1st THUS from Reader's Digest
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00 (2 in stock)
Two Years Before the Mast
by Richard Henry Dana
from Walter J. Black, Inc.
for 9th-Adult
in Walter J. Black Classics Club (Location: VIN-LITWJB)
Two Years Before the Mast
by Richard Henry Dana, illustrated by H.A. Mueller
from Heritage Press
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Two Years Before the Mast
Rainbow Classics
by Richard Henry Dana, illustrated by Alexander Dobkin
from World Publishing Company
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Two Years Before the Mast
by Richard Henry Dana, with period illustrations and a biographical sketch by H.W.L. Dana
from Dodd, Mead & Co.
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Two Years Before the Mast
by Richard Henry Dana, illustrated by Robert Frankenberg
from Doubleday & Company
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Everyman's Library
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$28.00
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
from Reader's Digest
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Great Illustrated Classics
by Harriet Beech Stowe
from Dodd, Mead & Co.
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe, illustrated by James Daugherty
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Everyman's Library
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
from SeaWolf Press
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
Walden
by Henry David Thoreau
from Dodd, Mead & Co.
for 10th-Adult
in Walter J. Black Classics Club (Location: VIN-LITWJB)
Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys
Everyman's Library Children's Classics
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 5th-10th grade
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