ABSTRACT
The Late Victorian Period, 1 three decades of waning confidence, commercial and industrial rivalries, imperial expansion, and increasing political, economic, social, and spiritual anxieties, extends from the beginning of Gladstone's first administration in 1868 to the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the close of the Boer War in 1902. In literary history it extends from the beginning of the Aesthetic Revival with Pater's first essays (1867–1868) to the death of Ruskin in 1900 and of Spencer in 1903. The activities of many of the writers already surveyed continued, but with few exceptions they are more characteristic of an earlier era. Thus, Herbert Spencer's huge project unfolded, but its inception dates from the mid-century; Ruskin had still to publish many volumes, but his work of most value had been done by 1868; Morris's career as a Socialist was yet to come, but his best poetry had been written; and though Rossetti and Swinburne overlap the dividing line (the latter by many years), Rossetti is obviously a mid-century figure and Swinburne's later poetry is in the main derivative from his earlier. On the other hand, though Meredith published his first noteworthy book as early as 1859, he seems to belong beyond the watershed; and Hardy's first published novel dates from 1871.
