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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: 10th grade (Ages 15-16), Trade Paperback
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
by Jules Verne, translated by F. P. Walter and illustrated by Edouard Riou and Alphonse de Neuville
1998 printing from US Naval Institute Press
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Abraham Lincoln: Selected Speeches and Writings
by Abraham Lincoln, introduction by Gore Vidal
from Library of America
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$18.95
Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Conan Doyle
from Penguin Classics
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.20
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
New Ed from University of California Press
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$15.95
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.00
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Oxford World's Classics
by Mark Twain, edited with an introduction and notes by Emory Elliott
2008 Reissue from Oxford University
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain Library
by Mark Twain, illustrated by E.W. Kemble and John Harley, edited by Victor Fischer, Lin Salamo with Harriet Elinor Smith and Walter Blair
from University of California Press
Realistic Fiction for 7th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$13.00 (1 in stock)
Adventures of Pinocchio
by Carlo Collodi, translated by Geoffrey Brock, with an introduction by Umberto Eco and an afterword by Rebecca West
from New York Review of Books
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$14.00
Adventures of Pinocchio
by Carlo Collodi, translated by John Hooper & Anna Kraczyna
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$15.00
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
by Lewis Carroll
from Modern Library
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.00
Anna and the King of Siam
by Margaret Landon
from HarperCollins
Historical fiction for 9th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$14.95
Annotated Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Revised & Expanded from Anchor Books
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$20.00 $12.00 (1 in stock)
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
Around the World in Eighty Days
by Jules Verne, translated by William Butcher
Reprint from Oxford University
for 8th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.95
Autobiography of Charles G. Finney
by Charles G. Finney
from Bethany House
Autobiography for 9th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$18.00
Autobiography of Charles G. Finney
by Charles G. Finney
from Bethany House
Autobiography for 9th-Adult
in History for Adults (Location: ADU-HIS)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Baronet's Song
by George MacDonald, edited by Michael R. Phillips
1st THUS from Bethany House
for 8th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Betrothed: I Promessi Sposi
by Alessandro Manzoni
REPRINT Edition from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories
by Herman Melville
from Bantam Books
Realistic Nautical Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.95
Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
from Penguin Putnam
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$13.00
Brit. Lit. Volume 6
by Charles Dickens
from Logos School
for 10th-12th grade
in Logos Brit. Lit. (Location: LITCUR-LOG)
$20.99
Canon Classics Worldview Guide: Frankenstein
from Canon Press
for 10th-12th grade
in British Literature Curriculum (Location: LITCUR-BRI)
$5.50 (1 in stock)
Civil War Hospital Sketches
by Louisa May Alcott
from Dover Publications
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.95 $3.50 (1 in stock)
Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
by Jacob Burckhardt
from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$17.00
Communist Manifesto
Penguin Classics
by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
from Penguin Classics
Political Philosophy for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00
Communist Manifesto
by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
from Signet Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.95
Communist Manifesto
Penguin Classics
by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
from Penguin Classics
Political Philosophy for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Complete Fairy Tales
Penguin Classics
by George MacDonald
from Penguin Classics
Fairy Tales, Fables, and Folklore for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$17.00
Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes
3rd edition from Bantam Books
Fairy Tales, Fables, and Folklore for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$25.00
Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm
from Bantam Books
Fairy Tales, Fables, and Folklore for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.50 (1 in stock)
Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales
by Brothers Grimm, Josef Scharl
from Pantheon Books
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan
by William Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan
from W. W. Norton and Co.
Drama for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$29.95
Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti
by Christina Rossetti
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$22.00
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
by Emily Dickinson
from Little, Brown & Company
for 7th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$23.99
Complete Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Penguin Classics
by Mark Twain
from Penguin Classics
Social Satire/Comedy for 8th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$10.00
Count of Monte Cristo
by Alexandre Dumas, translation by Robin Buss
from Modern Library
Realistic Fiction/Adventure for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Crime and Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
3rd edition from W. W. Norton and Co.
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$10.00 (1 in stock)
Crime and Punishment
Oxford World's Classics
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (translation by Jessie Coulson), introduction and notes by Richard Peace
2008 Reissue from Oxford University
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens
Revised from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.00
David Elginbrod
by George MacDonald
from CreateSpace
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Deerslayer
Leatherstocking Tales #1
by James Fenimore Cooper
from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$16.00
Diary of a Napoleanic Foot Soldier
by Jakob Walter
from Penguin Putnam
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$6.50 (1 in stock)
Encantadas and Other Stories
by Herman Melville
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
English Constitution
by Walter Bagehot
from Oxford University
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
English Governess at the Siamese Court
by Anna Harriette Leonowens
Reissue from Oxford University
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
English Victorian Poetry
by Paul Negri, ed.
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry Anthologies (Location: POET-ANTH)
$6.00
Fantasy Stories of George Macdonald - 4 Book Set
by George MacDonald, illustrated by Craig Yoe
from Eerdmans
Fantasy for 3rd-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Faust: A Tragedy
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Translated by Martin Greenberg
from Yale University Press
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$10.00 (1 in stock)
Favorite Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$5.00
Fisherman's Lady
by George MacDonald, edited by Michael R. Phillips
from Bethany House
for 8th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.00 (2 in stock)
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
from Penguin Putnam
Horror for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$10.00
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley, edited with an introduction and notes by M. K. Joseph
from Oxford University
Horror for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Gentlewoman's Choice
by George MacDonald, edited by Michael R. Phillips
2nd edition from Bethany House
for 8th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.00 (2 in stock)
George MacDonald: Selections from His Greatest Works
by David L. Neuhouser
from Victor Books
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Gifts of the Child Christ - 2 Volume Set
by George MacDonald
from Eerdmans
for 5th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Gray Wolf and Other Stories
by George MacDonald
2nd THUS from Eerdmans
for 7th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$17.00
Gray Wolf and Other Stories
by George MacDonald
from Eerdmans
for 7th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 10th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.00
Guy Mannering
by Sir Walter Scott
from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Hans Christian Andersen: The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories
by Hans Christian Andersen, Translated by Erik Christian Haugaard
1983 Anchor Books Edition from Anchor Books
for 2nd-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$27.00
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens
Reissue from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.00
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens
from Dover Publications
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Hazard of New Fortunes
by William Dean Howells
New edition from Modern Library
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$16.00
Hound of the Baskervilles
by Arthur Conan Doyle
from Dover Publications
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.00
House of the Seven Gables
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from W. W. Norton and Co.
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Wordsworth Classics
by Victor Hugo, translated by James Carroll Beckwith
First Edition from Wordsworth Classics
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Signet Classics
by Victor Hugo
from Barnes & Noble
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Idylls of the King
by Alfred Tennyson
from Penguin Classics
Epic Poetry for 8th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$17.00
Illustrated Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Chivalry
by Thomas Bulfinch, illustrated by Giovanni Caselli
from Macmillan
for 6th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
by Harriet Jacobs
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.00 $3.00 (1 in stock)
Israel Potter
by Herman Melville
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$16.00
Ivanhoe
by Sir Walter Scott
from Dover Publications
Historical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.95
Jack Nastyface
by William Robinson
from US Naval Institute Press
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.00 (1 in stock)
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.00
Joan of Arc
by Mark Twain
from Ignatius Press
Biography for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$18.95 $12.00 (1 in stock)
John Ploughman's Talk
by Charles Haddon Spurgeon
from Wipf and Stock Publishers
Christian Living for 10th-Adult
in Practical Christian Living (Location: XCL-PRAC)
$15.00
Journey to the Center of the Earth
by Jules Verne, illustrated by Edouard Riou
from Dover Publications
Science Fiction for 6th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$3.00 (1 in stock)
Kenilworth
Penguin Classics
by Sir Walter Scott
from Penguin Classics
Historical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Kidnapped
by Robert Louis Stevenson
from Bantam Books
Historical Romance for 9th-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)
King Solomon's Mines, Allan Quatermain and She
by H. Rider Haggard
from Dover Publications
Action/Adventure for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$16.95
Kit Carson's Autobiography
by Kit Carson
from University of Nebraska
Autobiography for 9th-12th grade
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon
Penguin Classics
by Jane Austen
from Penguin Classics
Realistic fiction for 8th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.00 $6.00 (2 in stock)
Landlady's Master
by George MacDonald
from Bethany House
for 8th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.00 (2 in stock)
Last Castle
by George MacDonald, edited for today's reader by Dan Hamilton
from Victor Books
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Last Cavalier
by Alexandre Dumas
from Pegasus Books
Historical Romance for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Last of the Mohicans
Leatherstocking Tales #2
by James Fenimore Cooper
Reprint from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$13.00
Last of the Mohicans
Leatherstocking Tales #2
by James Fenimore Cooper
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Les Miserables
Modern Library
by Victor Hugo, translated by Julie Rose
from Modern Library
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$20.00
Les Miserables
Penguin Classics
by Victor Hugo, translated by Norman Denny
from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Les Miserables
by Victor Hugo, translated by Christine Donagher
from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$27.00
Lilith
by George MacDonald
from Eerdmans
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$16.99
Little Dorrit
by Charles Dickens
from Penguin Putnam
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$13.00
Little Women
by Lousia May Alcott
from Penguin Putnam
Realistic Romantic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$10.00 $6.00 (4 in stock)
Long Fatal Love Chase
by Louisa May Alcott
First Thus from Dell Publishing
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.99
Lorna Doone
by R. D. Blackmore
from Oxford University
Realistic Romantic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$13.95
Lost World
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
from Modern Library
for 9th grade-adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$16.00
Louise de la Valliere
Alexandre Dumas Collection #4
by Alexandre Dumas
from Oxford University
Historical Fiction/Adventure for 9th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$15.95
Major Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
from Oxford University
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$15.95
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