ABSTRACT
The precisian may limit the Victorian period to the years between the Queen's accession in 1837 and her death in 1901, but a new era really began with the passage of the Reform Bill in 1832 and closed at the end of the Boer War in 1902. The seven decades between these two dates are often divided into three phases of national life, what is called the “Mid-Victorian” period being considered as embracing the years 1855 to 1879 from the ascendency of Palmerston to the great economic depression. For our purposes, however, it is more convenient to recognize but two divisions—“Early” and “Late”—of almost exactly equal length. According to this scheme the Early Victorian period extends from the Reform Bill of 1832, which coincides with the death of Scott, the definite emergence of Carlyle, and the publication of Tennyson's first significant volume, to the formation of Gladstone's first administration in 1868, the year which saw the climax of Browning's career with the appearance of The Ring and the Book and of Morris's with The Earthly Paradise. Of the thirty-six years to be surveyed in this chapter the first fourteen were filled with unrest, alarm, and misery, and they contrast with the growing prosperity and general good feeling of the succeeding twenty-two years when England, having committed herself to industrialism and free trade, became for a time “the workshop of the world.” 1
