1) Secondary literature:
- Robin Gilmour, The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1830—90 (Longman Literature In English Series) (Harlow: Longman, 1993), paperback
- Recommended supplementary reading (NB not obligatory, but recommended): Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830—1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957, reprinted 1977)
2) Primary works
Novels:
- Charlotte Bront? (1816—1855), Jane Eyre (1847), ed. Richard J. Dunn, 2nd edn (Norton Critical Edition, 2000)
- Charles Dickens (1812—70), Great Expectations (1860—1), ed. Edgar Rosenberg (Norton Critical Edition, 1999
- George Eliot (1819—80), Middlemarch (1871—2), ed. Bert G. Hornback, 2nd edn (Norton Critical Edition, 2000)
- Thomas Hardy (1857—1924), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), ed. Tim Dolin (Penguin, 1998)
Plays:
- Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), ed. Michael Patrick Gillespie (Norton Critical Edition, 2006)
- Tom Stoppard (1937—), The Invention of Love (Faber, 1997)
Poems:
NB! Nearly all these poems are found in Francis O’Gorman, ed., Victorian Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Blackwell, 2004) except Kipling’s ‘The Land’ and the poems by Housman. Students are expected to own a copy of O’Gorman’s anthology: the annotation is required reading. Good texts of Kipling’s and Housman’s poems are in print (and widely anthologized), and are also available on LION Database.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809—92), In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850)
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61), ‘A Musical Instrument’ (1862)
- Robert Browning (1812-89), ‘Caliban upon Setebos’ (1864)
- Matthew Arnold (1822—88), ‘Dover Beach’ (1867)
- Christina Rossetti (1830—94), ‘Goblin Market’ (1862)
- Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936), ‘The White Man’s Burden’, (1903), ‘If—’ (1910), ‘The Way Through the Woods’ (1910), ‘The Land’ (1917)
- Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844—89), ‘Pied Beauty’, ‘The Windhover’ (published posthumously, 1918)
A. E. Housman (1859—1936), ‘To an Athlete Dying Young’ and ‘Under Wenlock Edge the Wood’s in Trouble’ (A Shropshire Lad, 1896, nos 19 and 31); ‘Diffugere Nives’ [a translation of Horace, Odes 4.7] and ‘Because I liked you better’ (More Poems, nos 5 and 31); ‘He would not stay for me; and who can wonder?’, ‘Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?’, ‘I shall not die for you’ (Additional Poems, nos 7, 18, and 20).