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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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On Liberty and The Subjection of Women
Penguin Classics
by John Stuart Mill
from Penguin Putnam
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$14.00
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)
$16.96
Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Conan Doyle
from Penguin Classics
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.90
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)
$7.65
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)
$11.90
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)
$12.75
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)
$9.35
Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
First Printing from Penguin Putnam
for 11th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$17.85
Annotated Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Revised & Expanded from Anchor Books
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$17.85
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)
$5.94
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
Beyond Good & Evil
by Friedrich Nietzsche
from Vintage Classics
for 11th-Adult
in Philosophy (Location: XWV-PHI)
$12.75
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)
$4.21 $2.00 (1 in stock)
Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
from Penguin Putnam
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.05
Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky (translation by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky)
Bicentennial from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
for 11th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$17.00
Castle of Otranto
Dover Thrift Editions
by Horace Walpole
from Dover Publications
for 11th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.00
Civil War Hospital Sketches
by Louisa May Alcott
from Dover Publications
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$6.76 $2.80 (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)
$14.45
Communist Manifesto
Penguin Classics
by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
from Penguin Classics
Political Philosophy for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.65 $4.40 (1 in stock)
Communist Manifesto
by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
from Signet Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.91
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)
$14.45
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)
$21.25
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)
$25.46
Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats
by John Keats
from Modern Library
for 11th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$16.15
Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti
by Christina Rossetti
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$18.70
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
by Emily Dickinson
from Little, Brown & Company
for 7th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$20.39
Complete Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$18.70
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens
Revised from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.35
Democracy in America
Penguin Classics
by Alexis De Tocqueville
from Penguin Classics
American Government for 11th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$13.60
Democracy in America
by Alexis De Tocqueville
from Harper Perennial
American Government for 11th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$21.24
Dickens Dictionary
by Gilbert A. Pierce
2006 Reprint from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$29.95
English Victorian Poetry
by Paul Negri, ed.
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry Anthologies (Location: POET-ANTH)
$6.00
Favorite Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$4.25
Fear and Trembling
by Soren Kierkegaard
Reprint from Penguin Putnam
for 11th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$17.00
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
from Penguin Putnam
Horror for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.50
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)
$22.95
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens
Reissue from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.65
Hazard of New Fortunes
by William Dean Howells
New edition from Modern Library
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$13.60
Hound of the Baskervilles
by Arthur Conan Doyle
from Dover Publications
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.25
Idylls of the King
by Alfred Tennyson
from Penguin Classics
Epic Poetry for 8th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$14.45
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)
Interpretation of Dreams
by Sigmund Freud
from Basic Books
for 12th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$13.59
Israel Potter
by Herman Melville
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$13.60
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.65
Joan of Arc
by Mark Twain
from Ignatius Press
Biography for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$16.11
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
Kidnapped
by Robert Louis Stevenson
from Bantam Books
Historical Romance for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.95
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)
$11.05
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
from SeaWolf Press
for 11th-Adult
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
$10.16
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)
$17.00
Les Miserables
by Victor Hugo, translated by Christine Donagher
from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$22.95
Lilith
by George MacDonald
from Eerdmans
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$14.44
Little Dorrit
by Charles Dickens
from Penguin Putnam
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.05
Little Women
by Lousia May Alcott
from Penguin Putnam
Realistic Romantic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.35
Long Fatal Love Chase
by Louisa May Alcott
First Thus from Dell Publishing
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$6.79
Lorna Doone
by R. D. Blackmore
from Oxford University
Realistic Romantic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.86
Lost World
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
from Modern Library
for 9th grade-adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$17.00
Major Works of Lord Byron
by George Gordon, Lord Byron
from Oxford University
for 10th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$16.11
Major Works of William Wordsworth
by William Wordsworth
from Oxford University
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$16.11
Master and Man and Other Stories
Penguin Classics
by Leo Tolstoy
from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 11th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.05
Master of Ballantrae
Penguin Classics
by Robert Louis Stevenson
from SeaWolf Press
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
$8.49
Mimosa
by Amy Carmichael
from Christian Literature Crusade
for 9th-Adult
in History of Missions (Location: XCH-MIS)
$11.99
Moby-Dick
by Herman Melville
from Penguin Putnam
Realistic Nautical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$14.45
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Copper Lodge Library
by Frederick Douglass, annotated by Stephanie B. Meter
from Classical Conversations
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$12.00
North and South
Oxford World's Classics
by Elizabeth Gaskell
from Oxford University
Realistic fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.31
North and South
by Elizabeth Gaskell
from Dover Publications
Realistic fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.31
Old Curiosity Shop
Penguin Classics
by Charles Dickens
from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.05
Omoo
by Herman Melville
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.31
Oregon Trail
Penguin Classics
by Francis Parkman Jr.
from Penguin Classics
Historical Non-fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$17.00
Origin and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution
by Friedrich Von Gentz, translated by John Quincy Adams
from Liberty Fund
for 12th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$10.20
Origin of Species
Penguin Classics
by Charles Darwin
from Penguin Putnam
Scientific Philosophy for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.05
Origin of Species
Penguin Classics
by Charles Darwin
Rep Anv from Signet Classics
Scientific Philosophy for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.91
Our Mutual Friend
Penguin Classics
by Charles Dickens
from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.05
Ourika
by Claire De Duras, translated by John Fowles
from Modern Language Asociation of America
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$15.00
Paris in the Twentieth Century
by Jules Verne
from Random House
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$12.75
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant
Penguin Classics
by Ulysses S. Grant
from Penguin Classics
Autobiography for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$19.00
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
by Mark Twain
from Dover Publications
for 11th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$10.20
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
by Mark Twain
from Purple House Press
for 11th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$15.29
Pickwick Papers
Penguin Classics
by Charles Dickens
Reissue from Penguin Classics
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.05
Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
Revised from Penguin Classics
Mystery and Suspense for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.65
Pioneers
Leatherstocking Tales #4
by James Fenimore Cooper
Reprint from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$18.70
Plain Tales from the Hills
by Rudyard Kipling
Reissue from Oxford University
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$10.16
Portable Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$18.70
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
from Ignatius Press
Romantic Realistic Fiction for 8th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.95
Pudd'nhead Wilson
by Mark Twain
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$3.40
Quo Vadis
by Henryk Sienkiewicz, translated by W. S. Kuniczak
from Hippocrene Books
Historical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$21.21
Quo Vadis
by Henryk Sienkiewicz, translated by Jeremiah Curtin
from Dover Publications
Historical Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$12.71
Red Badge of Courage
by Stephen Crane
from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.50
Sanditon
by Jane Austen & "Another Lady"
Reprint from Simon and Schuster
Romantic Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$15.30
Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.65
Scarlet Letter
Dover Thrift Editions
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from Ignatius Press
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.95
Selected Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Reprint from Penguin Classics
for 8th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$15.30
Selected Tales and Sketches of Nathaniel Hawthorne
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from Penguin Putnam
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.05
Self-Reliance & Other Essays
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
from CreateSpace
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$7.99
Self-Reliance and Essays on the Nature of Man
Copper Lodge Library
by Ralph Waldo Emerson, annotated by Stephanie B. Meter
from Classical Conversations
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$14.00
Sense and Sensibility
by Jane Austen
from Dover Publications
for 8th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.10
Silas Marner
by George Eliot
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$5.10 $2.40 (1 in stock)
Sir Nigel
by Arthur Conan Doyle
from Dover Publications
for 11th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$11.01
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