ABSTRACT
A change came over England as the eighteen-thirties gave way to the 'forties, not the dreaded revolution but a wave of social reform by which 'the artistocratic fabric was quietly permeated with radical ideas'. It was the very goal for which the inhabitants of Craven Hill had worked and yet, ironically, it did not bring them the satisfaction they had expected. Committed to creative literary expression as much as to the welfare of their fellows, they found the quiet revolution had also changed the literary climate. The desire for facts, figures and blue books which possessed the public appeared to have brought a corresponding taste for facts in literature. The socially realistic novel grew popular while poetry suffered a parallel decline. Facts took precedence over fantasy, reason over imagination, the reformer over the poet. The new literary leaders were novelists, journalists, historians – self-made, ambitious young men – the very leaders of the Professional Authors' movement in the next ten years. Dickens, Forster, Jerrold, Carlyle: the new rational temper had given them a status impossible fifty years before and they in turn fostered that temper in their work.
