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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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71 Items found Print
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Active Filters: Novels, 7th grade (Ages 12-13)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Sterling Classics
by Jules Verne, translated by Lewis Page Mercier and illustrated by Scott McKowen
from Sterling Publishing Co.
for 5th-10th grade
in Science Fiction (Location: FIC-SCI)
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Dover Thrift Editions
by Mark Twain
from Dover Publications
for 6th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.00
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)
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Puffin Classics
by Mark Twain
from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 6th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$10.00
Alice in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel
from Blushing Rose Publishing
for 5th-8th grade
in Fantasy Fiction (Location: FIC-FAN)
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Illustrated Junior Library Series 2
by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 5th-8th grade
in Illustrated Junior Library (Location: VIN-IJL)
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Illustrated Junior Library Series 1
by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 5th-8th grade
in Illustrated Junior Library (Location: VIN-IJL)
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Illustrated Junior Library Series 1
by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by Roberta Paflin
from Whitman Publishing Company
for 5th-8th grade
in Fantasy Fiction (Location: FIC-FAN)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Penguin Classics
by Lewis Carroll
from Penguin Classics
Fantasy for 5th-8th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.00
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel
from Macmillan
Fantasy for 7th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$18.00 (1 in stock)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Rainbow Classics
by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel
from World Publishing Company
for 4th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Around the World in Eighty Days
by Jules Verne, George M. Towle (Translator)
from Bantam Books
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.95 $3.00 (1 in stock)
Around the World in Eighty Days
Sterling Classics
by Jules Verne, illustrated by Scott McKowen
Unabridged from Sterling Publishing Co.
Adventure for 6th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Around the World in Eighty Days
Books of Wonder
by Jules Verne, illustrated by Barry Moser
from William Morrow & Company
Adventure for 6th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
At the Back of the North Wind
Macmillan Classics
by George MacDonald, illustrated by Harvey Dinnerstein
from Macmillan
for 4th-8th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
At the Back of the North Wind
New Children's Classics
by George MacDonald, illustrated by George & Doris Hauman
from Macmillan
for 4th-8th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
At the Back of the North Wind
by George MacDonald, illustrated by Charles Mozley
for 4th-8th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
At the Back of the North Wind
by George MacDonald, illustrated by Maria Kirk
for 4th-8th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
At the Back of the North Wind
by George MacDonald, illustrated by Frank C. Pape
for 4th-8th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Ben-Hur
Signet Classics
by Lew Wallace
from Signet Classics
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.95
Ben-Hur
by Lew Wallace
from Heritage Press
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Black Arrow
Scribner Illustrated Classics
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth
from Atheneum
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Black Arrow
Dover Evergreen Classics
by Robert Louis Stevenson
from Dover Publications
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
$5.99
Black Arrow
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth
from SeaWolf Press
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
$8.95
Black Arrow
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Frances Brundage
from Living Book Press
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in Historical Fiction (Location: FIC-HIF)
Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Stories
by Charles Dickens, illustrated by Arthur Rackham
from Dilithium Press, Ltd.
for 5th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Cloister and the Hearth
by Charles Reade, illustrated by Lynd Ward
from Heritage Press
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
David Balfour
Scribner Illustrated Classics
by Robert Louis Stevenson
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Action/Adventure for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
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)
ECL: Black Arrow
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Don Irwin
from Classic Press
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in Educator Classic Library (Location: VIN-ECL)
ECL: Black Beauty
Educator's Classic Library
by Anna Sewell, illustrated by Michael Rios
from Classic Press
for 3rd-7th grade
in Educator Classic Library (Location: VIN-ECL)
ECL: Time Machine & Invisible Man
by H. G. Wells, illustrated by Dick Cole
from Classic Press
Science Fiction/Dystopian literature for 7th-Adult
in Educator Classic Library (Location: VIN-ECL)
Five Weeks in a Balloon
by Jules Verne, translated by William Lackland and illustrated by Edouard Riou
Illustrated Fir from SeaWolf Press
for 5th-10th grade
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
$9.95
Frankenstein
Everyman's Library
by Mary Shelley
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Horror for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$22.00
Frankenstein
Dover Thrift Editions
by Mary Shelley
from Dover Publications
for 7th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$6.00
Frankenstein
Portland House Illustrated Classics
by Mary Shelley, illustrated by Lynd Ward and Aristides Ruiz
from Portland House
Horror for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Great Expectations (abridged)
Puffin Classics
by Charles Dickens
from Puffin Books
Realistic Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in Puffin Classics (Location: FIC-PUF)
$7.99
Hound of the Baskervilles
by Arthur Conan Doyle
from Dover Publications
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.00
Hound of the Baskervilles
by Arthur Conan Doyle, Illustrated by Sidney Paget
100th Anniversary from SeaWolf Press
for 7th-Adult
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
$7.95
Invisible Man
by H. G. Wells
from Signet Classics
Science Fiction for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.95
Invisible Man
by H. G. Wells, illustrated by Louis Strimpl
from SeaWolf Press
Science Fiction for 7th-Adult
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
$7.95
Jane Eyre
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Charlotte Bronte, illustrated by Richard Lebenson
1st edition from Reader's Digest
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Sterling Classics
by Jules Verne, illustrated by Scott McKowen
from Sterling Publishing Co.
Science Fiction for 6th-10th grade
in Science Fiction (Location: FIC-SCI)
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Great Illustrated Classics
by Jules Verne
from Dodd, Mead & Co.
Science Fiction for 6th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Kidnapped
Everyman's Library Children's Classics
by Robert Louis Stevenson
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Action/Adventure for 4th-8th grade
$20.00
Kidnapped
Scribner Illustrated Classics
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth
from Atheneum
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Kidnapped
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth and Graham Oakley
from Dilithium Press, Ltd.
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
King Solomon's Mines
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by H. Rider Haggard
Reader's Digest ed from Reader's Digest
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
King Solomon's Mines
by H. Rider Haggard
125th anniversary edition from Great Light Publications
for 7th-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)
Lorna Doone (abridged)
by R. D. Blackmore, illustrated by Pauline D. Baynes
from American Education Publications
for 7th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Lorna Doone (adapted)
by R. D. Blackmore, adapted by Jordan, Berglund & Washburne, illustrated by Alexander Key
Reprint from Scott, Foresman & Co.
for 7th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Volume 3
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
from W. W. Norton and Co.
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens
from Oxford University
Realistic Fiction for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$6.95
Pride and Prejudice (abridged)
Puffin Classics
by Jane Austen, Abridged by Linda Jennings
from Puffin Books
Realistic Romantic Fiction for 7th-12th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
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)
Red Badge of Courage
by Stephen Crane
from Bantam Books
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.95
Red Badge of Courage
by Stephen Crane & Ambrose Bierce
from SeaWolf Press
Historical Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
$7.45
Tale of Two Cities
Portland House Illustrated Classics
by Charles Dickens, illustrated by Harvey Dunn
from Portland House
for 7th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Time Machine
by H. G. Wells
from Dover Publications
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$2.00 (1 in stock)
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)
Treasure Island
Whole Story Series
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Francois Place
from Viking Press
Action/Adventure for 5th-9th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Milo Winter
from Dilithium Press, Ltd.
for 5th-10th grade
in Action & Adventure Stories (Location: FIC-ADV)
Treasure Island
by Sir Robert Louis Stevenson
from Bantam Books
for 6th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.95
Treasure Island
Windermere Readers #16
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Milo Winter
1954 Edition from Rand McNally
for 5th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$9.00 (2 in stock)
Treasure Island
Windermere Series 1
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Milo Winter
from Rand McNally
for 5th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Treasure Island
Windermere Series 2
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Milo Winter
1921 printing from Rand McNally
for 5th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Treasure Island
Windermere Series 3
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Milo Winter
1924 Printing from Rand McNally
for 5th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
Treasure Island
Windermere Series 4
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Milo Winter
1939 Edition from Rand McNally
for 5th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
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