ABSTRACT
The twentieth century really begins before the end of the nineteenth century. Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in was felt by many to represent the end of an era. An end-of-century stoicism, and a growing pessimism among writers and intellectuals, may be traced to several sources, not least the publication in of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species which put the existence of God into radical question. Across the whole population, and in the face of rapid economic and social changes, radical doubts about the stability of the existing order were expressed.
