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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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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
by Jules Verne, Translated by Lewis Page Mercier, edited by Allen Grove
from Chartwell Books
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Windermere Readers #19
by Jules Verne, translated by Philip Schuyler Allen with a frontispiece by Milo Winter
1956 printing from Rand McNally
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$8.00 (2 in stock)
Adam Bede
Everyman's Library
by George Eliot
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$20.40
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Other Stories
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
from Canterbury Classics
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.00 (1 in stock)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Macmillan Classics
by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel
from Macmillan
Fantasy for 7th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$14.40 (1 in stock)
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)
$3.20 (1 in stock)
Around the World in 80 Days (abridged)
by Jules Verne, abridged by Hilda Young, illustrated by Gianni Demo
from World Distributors (Manchester)
for 3rd-6th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$12.80 (1 in stock)
Authoress of the Odyssey
by Samuel Butler, introduction by David Grene
from University of Chicago
for 8th-10th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
from Everyman's Library
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$22.50
Carl Sandburg
by Milton Meltzer
from Twenty-first Century Books
for 9th-Adult
in Biographies (Location: BIO)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Child's Garden of Verses
Arcadia
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Charles Robinson
from Princess House Books
Poetry for 1st-5th grade
in Poetry for Children (Location: POET-CHIL)
$7.20 (1 in stock)
Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens
from Bantam Books
for 6th-10th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$3.95
Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens, illustrated by P.J. Lynch
Unabridged from Candlewick Press
Fantasy for 6th-10th grade
in Fantasy Fiction (Location: FIC-FAN)
$16.99
Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens, illustrated by Robert Ingpen
Unabridged from Palazzo Editions Limited
Fantasy for 6th-10th grade
in Fantasy Fiction (Location: FIC-FAN)
$24.99
Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens, illustrated by Roberto Innocenti
Unabridged from Creative Editions
Fantasy for 6th-10th grade
in Fantasy Fiction (Location: FIC-FAN)
$35.00
Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens, illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger
from North-South Books
for 9th-12th grade
in Fantasy Fiction (Location: FIC-FAN)
$21.24
Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books
by Charles Dickens, introduction by Margaret Atwood
from Everyman's Library
for 8th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$24.00
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)
$21.25
Complete Novels of Jane Austen
by Jane Austen
from Canterbury Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$21.25
Complete Tales of Uncle Remus
by Joel Chandler Harris
from Houghton Mifflin
Animal Fantasy for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$33.99
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
Cruel as the Grave
by Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
from M. A. Donohue & Company
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$4.80 (1 in stock)
CS: Gulliver's Travels
Classic Starts
by Jonathan Swift, adapted by Martin Woodside and Illustrated by Jamel Akib
Adapted from Sterling Publishing Co.
for 2nd-4th grade
in Sterling Classic Starts (Location: SER-SCS)
Cyrano de Bergerac
by Edmond Rostand, translated by Brian Hooker
1963 Reprint from Heinemann Educational Books
Drama for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$2.00 (1 in stock)
Deluge
The Trilogy #02
by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Translated by Jeremiah Curtin
from Little, Brown & Company
for Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$76.00 (1 in stock)
Dickens' Stories about Children
by Charles Dickens, illustrated by Clara Burd, introduction by Elizabeth Lodor Merchant
from John C. Winston
for 3rd-6th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$9.60 (1 in stock)
Diedrich Knickerbocker's A History of New York
by Washington Irving, illustrated by F.O.C. Darley, introduction by Andrew B. Myers
Facsimile, First Printing from Sleepy Hollow Press
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Edinburgh
by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by William Wilson
from Robert Grant & Son Ltd.
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$6.40 (1 in stock)
Emma
by Jane Austen, illustrated by Niroot Puttapipat with an inroduction by Deirdre Le Faye
from The Folio Society
Romantic Realistic Fiction for 8th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$75.00 (1 in stock)
Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
from A.S. Barnes and Co.
for Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$4.80 (1 in stock)
Eugenie Grandet
by Honore de Balzac, translated by Ellen Marriage, introduction by Richard Aldington, illustrations by Rene ben Sussan
from Heritage Press
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Fire in the Steppe
The Trilogy #03
by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Translated by W. S. Kuniczak
from Copernicus
for Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$28.00 (1 in stock)
Frankenstein
Everyman's Library
by Mary Shelley
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Horror for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$18.70
Golden Age
by Kenneth Grahame, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish
from Ten Speed Press
for 6th-9th grade
in Realistic Fiction (Location: FIC-REA)
$6.40 (1 in stock)
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens
from Everyman's Library
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$23.00
Hunger
by Knut Hamsun
Fifth Printing, 1967 from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$48.00 (1 in stock)
Illustrated Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes
by William Wordsworth, Edited by Peter Bicknell
from Congdon & Weed Inc.
for 9th-Adult
in Great Britain / England (Location: HISMC-BRIT)
$11.20 (1 in stock)
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)
$11.60 (1 in stock)
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)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
King's Jackal
by Richard Harding Davis
from Charles Scribner's Sons
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$9.60 (1 in stock)
Lady of the Lake
The Students' Series of English Classics
by Sir Walter Scott, edited with introduction and notes by James Arthur Tufts
from Leach, Shewell & Sanborn
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
$4.80 (1 in stock)
Last Days of Pompeii
by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Art-Type Edition, undated from Books, Inc.
for Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$3.20 (1 in stock)
Last Days of Pompeii
by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton
from Heritage Press
for Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$9.60 (1 in stock)
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)
$21.24
Leatherstocking Tales - Penguin Collection
by James Fenimore Cooper
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
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)
$6.40 (1 in stock)
Les Miserables
by Victor Hugo, translated by Charles Wilbour
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$40.80
Life of Our Lord
by Charles Dickens
from Simon and Schuster
for 7th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$13.60
Life on the Mississippi
Signet Classics
by Mark Twain
from Harper & Brothers
Autobiography for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$7.20 (1 in stock)
Little Dorrit
by Charles Dickens
from Everyman's Library
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$35.00
Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal
from Macmillan
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
$7.20 (1 in stock)
Madame Bovary
by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Francis Steegmuller and illustrated by Honore Daumier
from Random House
for 11th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$6.40 (1 in stock)
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
by Stephen Crane, introduction by Shirley Ann Grau, engravings by Sigmund Abeles
from The Limited Editions Club
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$13.60 (1 in stock)
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
from Random House
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$35.00
Mill on the Floss
by George Eliot
from Everyman's Library
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$28.90 $19.04 (1 in stock)
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)
$27.20
My First Summer in the Sierra
by John Muir
from Gibbs M. Smith
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$14.41
Mysterious Island
by Jules Verne, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth
from Charles Scribner's Sons
Science Fiction for 8th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$16.00 (1 in stock)
Mystery of Edwin Drood
by Charles Dickens
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$15.30
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated by Rene Clarke
from Heritage Press
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Old Curiosity Shop
Everyman's Library
by Charles Dickens
from Everyman's Library
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$21.25
Old Curiosity Shop
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Charles Dickens
from Reader's Digest
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$6.40 (1 in stock)
Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm; translated by Jack Zipes, illustrated by Andrea Dezso
from Princeton University Press
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$29.75
Our Mutual Friend
Everyman's Library
by Charles Dickens
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$34.00
Outline of History - 2 Volumes
by H. G. Wells
from Garden City Books
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage History & Biographies (Location: VIN-HIS)
$24.00 (1 in stock)
Pickwick Papers
Penguin Classics
by Charles Dickens
from Everyman's Library
Realistic Fiction for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$22.10
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen, illustrated by Niroot Puttapipat with an inroduction by Deirdre Le Faye
from The Folio Society
Romantic Realistic Fiction for 8th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$95.00 (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-Headed League and The Adventure of the Speckled Band
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, illustrated by Paul Spina
from Franklin Watts
for 6th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
by Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward FitzGerald and illustrated by Sarkis Katchadourian
from Grosset & Dunlap
for 11th-Adult
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$26.00
Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, illustrated by Chris Duke
from Franklin Library
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
Selected Works of Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
from Progress Publishers
for Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$6.40 (1 in stock)
Shropshire Lad
The Living Library
by A. E. Housman, Illustrated by Jeanne Edwards
from World Publishing Company
for 7th-12th grade
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Story Cube Collection
by Stephen Crane
from Gamewright Games
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Sybil
by Benjamin Disraeli
from The Folio Society
for 10th-12th grade
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Tales of Hoffman
by E.T.A. Hoffman, illustrated by Hugo Steiner-Prag
from Heritage Press
for Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$9.60 (1 in stock)
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)
Tales of the East and West
by Joseph Conrad, edited by Morton Dauwen Zabel
from Hanover House
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$5.60 (1 in stock)
Three Musketeers
Macmillan Classics
by Alexandre Dumas, illustrated by James Daugherty
2nd Printing, 1923 from Macmillan
for 10th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$20.00 (1 in stock)
Tom Sawyer Abroad
by Mark Twain
from SeaWolf Press
for 7th-Adult
in Seawolf Illustrated Classics (Location: FIC-SW)
$8.95
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)
Tramp Abroad
by Mark Twain, Illustrated by David Knight, Introduction by Edward Wagenknecht
from Heritage Press
for 8th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$9.60 (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)
$23.80
Villette
Everyman's Library
by Charlotte Bronte
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 10th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$26.00
Wood Magic
by Richard Jefferies
from The Third Press
for Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$6.40 (1 in stock)
Works of Chekhov
by Anton Chekhov
from Black's Readers Service Company
for Adult
in Walter J. Black Classics Club (Location: VIN-LITWJB)
$4.00 (1 in stock)
Works of Flaubert
by Gustave Flaubert
from Walter J. Black, Inc.
for 10th-Adult
in Walter J. Black Classics Club (Location: VIN-LITWJB)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Works of Gautier
by Theophile Gautier
from Walter J. Black, Inc.
for Adult
in Walter J. Black Classics Club (Location: VIN-LITWJB)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Works of Hawthorne
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
from Walter J. Black, Inc.
for 10th-Adult
in Walter J. Black Classics Club (Location: VIN-LITWJB)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Works of Hugo
by Victor Hugo
from Walter J. Black, Inc.
for Adult
in Walter J. Black Classics Club (Location: VIN-LITWJB)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Works of Stevenson
by Robert Louis Stevenson
from Walter J. Black, Inc.
for Adult
in Walter J. Black Classics Club (Location: VIN-LITWJB)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Works of Wilde
by Oscar Wilde
from Black's Readers Service Company
for Adult
in Walter J. Black Classics Club (Location: VIN-LITWJB)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Wuthering Heights
Everyman's Library
by Emily Bronte
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Realistic Fiction for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$30.00
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