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every other answer here is wrong, and centered on a fundamental ignorance of what nihilism is. let's clear up some misconceptions real quick…Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Camus weren't nihilists. every one of them argued against their conception of nihilism, tho none of them understood nihilism, and in Kierkegaard’s case, nihilism didn't exist yet. he thought up a thing he called “levelling” (he didn't even call it nihilism!) and said it would suck…if it existed. like…it wasn't even a thing, no one was doing it, it wasn't a description of the world or anything relevant at all, he just conceptualized a basically zen process of self-abolition in favor of pure conformist communal identity, and he was like “lol imagine if ppl totally leveled their individuality and became these like, hivemind borg conformist drones, that'd be fuckin weird, huh? don't do that” and centuries later, people…for fucking some reason…retroactively labeled him a nihilist for basically engaging in the 1800s' version of shitposting. Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre all argued against nihilism's opposition to morality, meaning, and purpose, denied being nihilists, and vocally opposed nihilism, but for some fucking reason they're all commonly cited as nihilistsidk if there was something about “importance” in the question originally, and it was later merged and had the wording changed or something like that, but a few people here said a nihilist wouldn't see themself as important…there is nothing about nihilism that would prevent a nihilist from being, or seeing themself as important in whatever sort of subjective way. that sounds more like a description of the consequences of Kierkegaard’s “levelling”:One person can head a rebellion, but one person cannot head this levelling process, for that would make him a leader and he would avoid being levelled.and, not exactly a misconception, but the assumed premise the question rests on should be adressed too: that there are any famous nihilists. obviously, “famous” is a subjective concept, but i'd say there aren't any truly famous nihilists in history. infamous in their time, for sure, but none whose names are common knowledge today, sadly. also, most modern nihilist writers write anonymously, and most nihilistic actions are taken surreptitiously, so if a nihilist becomes (in)famous, that typically represents a failure on their partbut before looking at the few names we do have, we should establish what nihilism isthe term “nihilist” was frequently used as a pejorative by christians to describe their opponents, in the 1840s-1850s to say that anti-christians “believe in nothing” (think of conservatives calling liberals “snowflakes” today), and pretty soon after the word started getting thrown around, self-styled anarchists like Kropotkin and Bakunin (tho those two in particular sucked at anarchism fyi) basically responded “yep! we believe in nothing. no gods, no masters, no state, no capitalism or socialism, no masters, no slaves, burn this shit down!” so “nihilism” had become the word for the politics of the anarchists. shortly after, a novel based on the rebellions was put out by Ivan Turgenev, commonly translated to Fathers and Sons, which popularized the term “nihilist”, making it a household word, literally by depicting it becoming a household word lol:"He is a nihilist!""What?" asked Nikolai Petrovich, while Pavel Petrovich lifted his knife in the air with a small piece of butter on the tip and remained motionless."He is a nihilist," repeated Arkady."A nihilist," said Nikolai Petrovich. "That comes from the Latin nihil, nothing, as far as I can judge; the word must mean a man who... who recognizes nothing?""Say — who respects nothing," interposed Pavel Petrovich and lowered his knife with the butter on it."Who regards everything from the critical point of view," said Arkady."Isn't that exactly the same thing?" asked Pavel Petrovich"No, it's not the same thing. A nihilist is a person who does not bow down to any authority, who does not accept any principle on faith, however much that principle may be revered."since then, nihilist critique has deepened and broadened to include not only authority figures and authoritarian institutions, but also abstract authorities like morality, purpose, family, duty, and repressive notions like collective identity, meaning, etc.i'll leave the earliest “nihilists” like Kropotkin and Bakunin out of my list, cuz like i said, they sucked at it…they weren't really anarchists/nihilists. they liked the basics but didn't grasp the finer points. same with Bakunin's buddy, Sergey Nechayev, who wrote The Catechism of a Revolutionary- widely considered to be the original nihilist manifesto, but not fitting with the modern conception of nihilism, since it rests heavily on notions like duty, purpose, and responsibility. the people and collectives i'm about to list actually made solid arguments and provided worthwhile contributions to the truly antisocial societyANTI-EVERYTHING WHATEVERSRenzo Novatorerevolted against the fascist regime of 1930s Italy, and died in a shoot out with police, additionally armed with grenades and cyanide. also wrote silly prose with great content, on The Creative Nothing, being a nihilist, etc.Max Stirnerwhile, to my knowledge, he never called himself a “nihilist”, his masterpiece, The Ego and Its Own (which was published a few years before the word “nihilist” started being used to describe the positions he wrote about) perfectly outlines nihilism, and influenced probably every nihilist in history, like Renzo Novatore, who referred to Stirner as “an invincible and unsurpassable iconoclast”Lee Edelmanunfortunately, i don't have a link to read it for free online, but Edelman wrote what is easily one of my favorite books ever; No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive; a manifesto on queer antifuturismGiorgio Agambenalso doesn't call himself a nihilist as far as i know, but it's a common word used to describe his “continental philosophy”, and his books, like The Coming Community, Profanations (PDF download link…that i think will work), The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath, etc., provide some of the best insight into nihilism imo, even if he doesn't use the term…also, his essay “Whatever” inspired the above headerBob Blackprobably the most famous modern nihilist still alive and writing, he's written pieces like this one, critiquing identity politics, capitalism, etc.Anonymoussomeone named Anonymous has been putting out a slew of great stuff for a long time now…my personal favorite is At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, its Defenders, and its False Criticsother than a few scattered names throughout the past few centuries, there are several collectives that have put out great stuff in (relatively) recent years, like;The Institute for Experimental Freedomthey've put out several of my favorite books, zines, and magazines ever, but good luck finding any now…they kind of disappeared a few years ago, but luckily they made their mark on the internet. check out the second of 3 installments of Politics is Not a BananaCrimethInc.CrimethInc. is a multifaceted non-homogeneous collective that's been around for a long time, and not all of what they've done has been overtly nihilistic, but they've made several crucial and amazing contributions in action/interaction, infrastructure, and dissemination of ideas, in particular the linked pieces, Terror Incognita, and Vörtext, to which Terror Incognita is a prefaceBash Back!Bash Back! was a decentralized queer resistance group, and similarly to CrimethInc., but on a grander scale, was a huge movement containing diverse, disparate, often mutually exclusive elements. some, in particular the earliest, and core tendencies, were nihilistic. later, as the appeal of the group became more widespread, of course a wider range of people participated, and the overall tendencies of the movement shifted in a more liberal and nonthreatening direction, which led to the project dissolving, but some of my favorite analyses, essays, actions (like queer dance party riots, and attacks on nazis), and slogans (like “my preferred pronouns are negation.”) came out of that movementWarzonerecently, Warzone, a zine distro, started selling nihilist zines and stuff online. it's the best place (irl or url) i’ve ever known of to find a large, solid collection of nihilist and similar essays and treatises from a variety of writers, if you're willing to pay a few bucks for a copy. there's a “nihilism” tag you can click on there to see everything they have on nihilism, too. i know the person who runs that distro, and i personally vouch for their judgement.side note: when i was verifying that link, i noticed the top essay was a new one (as far as i know) entitled “A is for Nihilism”. obviously i haven't read that one yet, but now i'm excited toEDIT: i recently created a nihilist space—the only nihilist space on quora—over here: the abyssMy soul is a sacrilegious templein which the bells of sin and crime,voluptuous and perverse,loudly ring out revolt and despair.

People should stop asking questions about Africa as if it was a country.Africa is the second largest continent of 58 countries and territories and 5 geopolitical regions : North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa and Central Africa.People should stop asking question about Africa as if Africans never produced a literature only recently thanks to European colonization and the Arab expansion.Ancient Egyptians and Nubians produced the oldest forms of literature. Axumites (Ethiopia and Eritrea) also produced some of the oldest forms of literature in Africa.People should stop asking questions about African literature as if African oral literature was not recognized as literature.People should stop asking questions about African literature as if Africans never produced world-folk epics.List of world folk-epics - WikipediaWorld folk-epics are those epics which are not just literary masterpieces but also an integral part of the worldview of a people. They were originally oral literatures, which were later written down by either single author or several writers.African languagesBayajidda, a West African epicEri, a West African epicLianja, a Central African epicOduduwa, a West African epicSilamaka, a West African epicEpic of Sundiata, a West African epic…..The history of my people, Nkundo-Mongo, passed down orally since the 14th was related by our elders to a Belgian missionary who wrote a 700 page long world folk-epic Lianja epic. Several world-folk epics come from people of the Congo.https://danielbiebuyckcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/congo-epic20161223.pdfThe Epic as a Genre in Congo Oral Literature by Daniel Biebuyck.…The Lianja Epic (Heinemann Frontline Series): Maneniang', Mubima, Mubima, Maneniang: 9789966467669: Amazon.com: Books.Since around the fourteenth century this heroic narrative has been handed down the generations orally within the Mongo People, and has now been published in English for the first time. The translation captures the African imagery, idiom and forms of literary expression. With the themes of peace, unity and reconciliation at its centre, the author encompasses and depicts the rich cultural heritage of the Mongo people. The narrative is simultaneously an expose of the great deeds of a legendary Mongo hero and the fascinating socio-historical, economic and religious context in which the Mongo have lived and continue to live.……Here is a link on African literature.Wendy Laura BelcherEarly African Literature: An Anthology of Written Texts from 3000 BCE to 1900 CECollected and edited by Wendy Laura BelcherIntroductionContrary to the general perception, the African literatures written before the twentieth century are substantial. Whatever limits can be imagined—in terms of geography, genre, language, audience, era—these literatures exceed them. Before the twentieth century, Africans wrote not just in Europe, but also on the African continent; they wrote not just in European languages, but in African languages; they wrote not just for European consumption, but for their own consumption; they wrote not just in northern Africa, but in sub-Saharan Africa; they wrote not just orally, but textually; they wrote not just historical or religious texts, but poetry and epic and autobiography; and they wrote not just in the nineteenth century, but in the eighteenth century and long, long before.Yet, the general public and even scholars of African literature are often unaware of these early literatures, mistakenly believing that African literature starts in the late 1950s as the result of colonization, instead of many centuries before it. In this view, Africa is a savage Caliban who is introduced to writing by a European Prospero and Things Fall Apart is his first articulation. Westerns assume that whatever writing happened to be done on the continent was not done by Africans or in African languages and scripts until very recently. This lack of awareness of three thousand years of African writing is particularly surprising given the legions of pre-twentieth-century African texts that historians have uncovered and studied in the past fifty years. While historians labor to overturn long-held misconceptions about Africa as a place without history, literary critics have done little to overturn misconceptions of Africa as a place without literature. The extraordinarily rich trove of pre-twentieth century African continental literatures has yet to be written about in any depth by Euro-American literary critics. Certainly, no book addresses their work at length and almost no literary essays published outside of Africa address the continental works.African literature written over the last millennia remains largely invisible for several significant reasons. One, many of the texts written more than two hundred years ago have not survived, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Scholars know they existed because travelers reported on them and extant texts make reference to now lost texts. Two, many were never published as print books and of those few manuscripts that were, most were published in obscure places. Three, very few of the texts written in an African language have been translated into any European language. For instance, the hundreds of Ethiopian indigenous texts remain obscure because only a handful have been translated into English. Indeed, in the dramatic cases of texts written in Meroitic or Libyco-Berber, the texts cannot be translated as the language and script is no longer understood. One of the great challenges of the twenty-first century will be archiving and translating the vast libraries of East and West Africa. Fourth, many continue to see sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa as geographic and literary domains separated by a gulf, rather than, as historians and archeologists continue to prove, having deep links to each other. As the origin of the human species, Africa is home to the most diverse peoples of any continent, one of its great strengths. That some of these Africans are lighter-skinned than others is an irrelevancy. All those born on the African continent, and whose forbearers were born on the continent, are Africans and have contributed to its vibrancy. The obsession with the race or region of African authors has resulting in obscuring the literature of the continent and prevented productive comparative work.This lack of knowledge about early African literature torques the study of modern African literature. Analyses of contemporary writing in the United States, Britain, or Europe often take into account a centuries-old literary tradition rooted in different but related forms and themes. But research on African literature today tends to ignore the continent’s long literary history, with most scholars today focusing on African writing in European languages produced since 1950. For example, few situate later Nigerian experiments in English like Tutola’s Palm-Wine Drinkard, Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy, and Iweala’s Beast of No Nation in relation to the English of earlier West African texts, such as the eighteenth-century diary of Antera Duke, an Efik slave-trading chief in what is now Nigeria. Likewise, few lay Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart alongside the work of Nigerian authors of the nineteenth century who were also concerned about the interaction of Christianity and local beliefs—including Egba clergyman Joseph Wright (1839), the famous Yoruba Anglican bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1837), and the Hausa writer Madugu Mohamman Mai Gashin Baki . Senegalese poet Léopold Sédar Senghor’s work on the Queen of Sheba is not considered in the context of the thirteenth-century Ethiopian text about her, Kebra Nagast.Selection of TextsWhatever the reasons that these literatures do not get the attention they deserve, the time is well past to start giving them that attention. This book therefore seeks to introduce these literatures and provide excerpts from a few. Influenced by recent trends in literary theory, particularly new historicism, I have selected texts using broad definitions of the basic categories. By “written text,” I mean anything inscribed by human hand or machine on any surface—whether parchment, paper, or stone—that uses a system of signs (symbolic or orthographic) that can be read by many members of a particular cultural group. By “Africa,” I mean the entire African continent and the peoples who originated there. By “African author,” I mean anyone born on the African continent to someone born on the African continent. I do not exclude authors on the basis of race, although I do note the author’s national or ethnic background. In the case of North Africa, I have been more exclusionary, focusing on African texts by those whose families were not originally from Europe or the Middle East. Thus, I have not included North African Roman or Greek authors. Since African diasporic literature written in the Americas has been collected and published frequently elsewhere, I do not include African diasporic authors unless they were born on the African continent. By “literature,” I mean any original text with elevated language or an active “I”, but specifically poetry, epic, romance, hymns, fictional narrative, epistles and belles letters, personal manifestos or philosophy, diaries, biography, and autobiography. Although many African translations vary significantly from their Arabic or Greek originals, I have not included any translations of texts written outside of Africa. By “written African literature,” I mean a text composed and written down in any language by an African author (or, in some rare cases, his or her amanuensis). I do not exclude texts written in European languages. I do exclude oral texts—although Africa has always had a vast unwritten literature in the oral forms of drama, epic, and poetry, that is not the subject of this book. A desideratum remains studying oral and written African literature together; I hope this book will aid that process.Our exclusion of certain authors or texts is never an argument about their importance or salience, but only due to such authors and texts finding adequate representation elsewhere. Thus, I do not generally include texts written by Europeans in Africa, although many Europeans who lived on the African continent for long periods had imbibed local thought and can be seen as part of a larger African literature. Such authors are generally represented well in travel anthologies.Quite frequently, texts are omitted because no English translation is available, no translation is possible, or all copies of the text have been lost. It is quite clear that for every extant pre-twentieth century African text, a thousand others did exist but were destroyed by the elements or conquest.Categories of TextsIn practice, this means that four general categories of written African literature are represented in this text. A prominent category of early written African literature is that written by Africans outside of Africa, in particular those who spent the majority of their lives in Europe or the Americas and were trained in Western educational systems. This includes not only the literature written by the millions of Africans taken to the new world as slaves, but also that written by the hundreds of African youths whom Europeans sent from the continent every year to study in England, France, Portugal, Italy, Holland and Germany from the 1400s on. While the genre of the slave narrative has been widely explored by literary scholars, this later type of the writing done by free Africans in Europe has received less attention, perhaps because much of it was not written in English. For instance, a rich but almost entirely unexplored body of early written African literature is African scholarship in Latin for European universities. I suspect that many discoveries of African literature will be made as more material from European universities is digitalized and the African authorship of some of these theses becomes known. Likewise for early written African literature in Portuguese.Another category of early written African literature is texts written by Africans on the African continent in Arabic. These include medieval inscriptions in Arabic from eleventh-century gravestones in Mali; letters written by the Emperor of Morocco in the 1600s to various European heads of state; Tarikh el-Fettach, a fifteenth-century manuscript about Jews in Tendirma, near Timbuktu; Tarikh es-Soudan, a seventeenth-century manuscript written by Abd-al-Rahman al Sadi of Timbuktu about the lives and wars of the kings of Mali in the 1200s, Kitab Ghanja, a chronicle from the 1700s in modern Ghana, and so on. Various archival projects in West and East Africa are bringing to light even more African manuscripts dating from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Unfortunately, a tendency to see Arabic as a language foreign to the African continent, despite being in use there for over a thousand years, leads to dismissing Arabic African literature as not indigenous. This would be tantamount to dismissing British literature as Italian because of the Roman invasion 2000 years ago. Misconceptions of Africa as a savage, untouched paradise do not square with the reality of Africa’s millennia of trading relationships with non-Africans and its long traditions of Islam and Christianity.The final category of early written African literature is that written by Africans on the African continent in African languages, sometimes in African scripts. The African languages with the largest bodies of extant texts are Gəˁəz, Kiswahili, Hausa, Amharic, and Somali [more].We do not want to suggest that these categories cannot be fruitfully read together. For instance, if I look at some of the early writing by just one ethnic group in West Africa over just one century I find it occurring in several languages and over several continents. There were at least half-a-dozen eighteenth-century Akan writers (Gonja Chronicles?) whose manuscripts have survived. These texts by these Akan authors must be seen as the result of a particular African discursive system, not just as tainted by the European languages in which they were sometimes written. All these men were shaped by the same African culture and their texts should be read in light of each other.African ScriptsAs the table shows, ancient Africa had many indigenous scripts, including hieroglyphs and hieratic, both developed in Egypt around five thousand years ago to represent the ancient Egyptian language. Egyptians then invented Demotic, which was related to Hieratic, and Coptic, which was related to Greek and used to represent an African language. Nubians used all the Egyptian scripts, but also invented their own, Meroitic, to represent the African languages of Meroitic and Old Nubian. Meanwhile in North Africa and the Sahel, Africans invented the Libyco-Berber scripts to represent a variety of Berber languages, while East Africans invented Ethiopic (or Gəˁəz) to represent the African language of Gəˁəz. In the medieval period, Africans in East, West, and North Africa used the Arabic script, but in the early modern period, Africans invented Ajami, which is related to the Arabic script, for their East and West African languages. It is only in the twentieth century that the Roman alphabet came to be used widely in Africa. By the late eighteenth century, Africans also invented the secret ideographic writing system of Nsibidi. That Nsibidi was “discovered” by Europeans only in the twentieth century suggests that other unknown African scripts may have been used during the early modern period. It is also worthwhile to mention Adinkra, a pictographic script invented by 1817 in what is now Ghana, and Vai, an alphabet invented in Liberia in the 1830s. In the twentieth century, Africans invented over a dozen scripts, but only a few are still used.……Oral Literature in AfricaRuth Finnegan’s Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan’s ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, “drum language” and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. As with all Open Book publications, this entire book can be read for free online. It is also available as a free pdf and ebook download, thanks to generous donations from supporters using the crowd-funding website Unglue.it - A Community Supporting Free eBooks. In addition, there is a free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s……Amazon.fr - Epic Traditions of Africa - Belcher, Stephen - LivresEpic Traditions of Africa crosses boundaries of language, distance, and time to gather material from diverse African oral epic traditions. Stephen Belcher explores the rich past and poetic force of African epics and places them in historical and social, as well as artistic contexts. Colorful narratives from Central and West African traditions are illuminated along with texts that are more widely available to Western readers--the Mande Sunjata and the Bamana Segou. Belcher also takes up questions about European influences on African epic poetry and the possibility of mutual influence through out the genre. This lively and informative volume will inspire an appreciation for the distinctive qualities of this uniquely African form of verbal artVibrant Voices from a Vast Continent - Johnson, John William, Hale, Thomas A., Belcher, Stephen - Livres"It is difficult to imagine a more practical introduction to contemporary African epic than this anthology . . . no other single volume comprehends the full scope of African epic (as opposed to praise poetry) the way this one does. . . . The stories are engaging, and the free-verse translations are surprisingly readable. . . . Recommended for all academic collections." --ChoiceWestern culture traces its literary heritage to such well-known epics as the Iliad and the Odyssey and Gilgamesh. But it is only recently that scholars have turned their attention toward capturing the rich oral tradition that is still alive in Africa today. These 25 selections introduce English-speaking readers to the extensive epic traditions in Africa.

Victorian literature - WikipediaVictorian literatureFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaHerbert F. Tucker: A Companion to Victorian Literature and CultureWhile in the preceding Romantic period poetry had been the dominant genre, it was the novel that was most important in the Victorian period. Charles Dickens (1812–1870) dominated the first part of Victoria's reign: his first novel, Pickwick Papers, was published in 1836, and his last Our Mutual Friend between 1864–5. William Thackeray's (1811–1863) most famous work Vanity Fair appeared in 1848, and the three Brontë sisters, Charlotte (1816–55), Emily (1818–48) and Anne (1820–49), also published significant works in the 1840s. A major later novel was George Eliot's (1819–80) Middlemarch (1872), while the major novelist of the later part of Queen Victoria's reign was Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), whose first novel, Under the Greenwood Tree, appeared in 1872 and his last, Jude the Obscure, in 1895.Robert Browning (1812–89) and Alfred Tennyson (1809–92) were Victorian England's most famous poets, though more recent taste has tended to prefer the poetry of Thomas Hardy, who, though he wrote poetry throughout his life, did not publish a collection until 1898, as well as that of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89), whose poetry was published posthumously in 1918. Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) is also considered an important literary figure of the period, especially his poems and critical writings. Early poetry of W. B. Yeats was also published in Victoria's reign. With regard to the theatre it was not until the last decades of the nineteenth century that any significant works were produced. This began with Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, from the 1870s, various plays of George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) in the 1890s, and Oscar Wilde's (1854–1900) The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895.Contents[hide]1 Prose fiction2 Poetry3 Drama4 Children's literature5 Science, philosophy and discovery 5.1 Nature writing5.2 Supernatural and fantastic literature6 The influence of Victorian literature7 Other Victorian writers8 See also9 Notes10 External linksProse fictionMain article: English novelCharles Dickens is the most famous Victorian novelist. Extraordinarily popular in his day with his characters taking on a life of their own beyond the page; Dickens is still one of the most popular and read authors of the world. His first novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836–37) written when he was twenty-five, was an overnight success, and all his subsequent works sold extremely well. The comedy of his first novel has a satirical edge and this pervades his writing. Dickens worked diligently and prolifically to produce the entertaining writing that the public wanted, but also to offer commentary on social problems and the plight of the poor and oppressed. His most important works include Oliver Twist (1837–39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39)A Christmas Carol (1843), Dombey and Son (1846–48), David Copperfield (1849–50), Bleak House (1852–53), Little Dorrit (1855–57), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1860–61).There is a gradual trend in his fiction towards darker themes which mirrors a tendency in much of the writing of the 19th century.William Thackeray was Dickens' great rival in the first half of Queen Victoria's reign. With a similar style but a slightly more detached, acerbic and barbed satirical view of his characters, he also tended to depict a more middle class society than Dickens did. He is best known for his novel Vanity Fair (1848), subtitled A Novel without a Hero, which is an example of a form popular in Victorian literature: a historical novel in which recent history is depicted.The Brontë sisters wrote fiction rather different from that common at the time.Anne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë produced notable works of the period, although these were not immediately appreciated by Victorian critics. Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily's only work, is an example of Gothic Romanticism from a woman's point of view, which examines class, myth, and gender. Jane Eyre (1847), by her sister Charlotte, is another major nineteenth century novel that has gothic themes. Anne's second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), written in realistic rather than romantic style, is mainly considered to be the first sustained feminist novel.[1]Later in this period George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), published The Mill on the Floss in 1860, and in 1872 her most famous work Middlemarch. Like the Brontës she published under a masculine pseudonym.In the later decades of the Victorian era Thomas Hardy was the most important novelist. His works include Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895).Other significant novelists of this era were Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865), Anthony Trollope (1815–1882), George Meredith (1828–1909), and George Gissing (1857–1903).PoetryMain article: English poetryLord Tennyson, the Poet LaureateThe husband and wife team of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning conducted their love affair through verse and produced many tender and passionate poems. Both Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote poems which sit somewhere in between the exultation of nature of the romantic Poetry and the Georgian Poetry of the early 20th century. However Hopkins's poetry was not published until 1918. Arnold's works anticipate some of the themes of these later poets, while Hopkins drew inspiration from verse forms of Old English poetry such as Beowulf.The reclaiming of the past was a major part of Victorian literature with an interest in both classical literature but also the medieval literature of England. The Victorians loved the heroic, chivalrous stories of knights of old and they hoped to regain some of that noble, courtly behaviour and impress it upon the people both at home and in the wider empire. The best example of this is Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King, which blended the stories of King Arthur, particularly those by Thomas Malory, with contemporary concerns and ideas. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood also drew on myth and folklore for their art, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti contemporaneously regarded as the chief poet amongst them, although his sister Christina is now held by scholars to be a stronger poet.DramaIn drama, farces, musical burlesques, extravaganzas and comic operas competed with Shakespeare productions and serious drama by the likes of James Planché and Thomas William Robertson. In 1855, the German Reed Entertainments began a process of elevating the level of (formerly risqué) musical theatre in Britain that culminated in the famous series of comic operas by Gilbert and Sullivan and were followed by the 1890s with the first Edwardian musical comedies. The first play to achieve 500 consecutive performances was the London comedy Our Boys by H. J. Byron, opening in 1875. Its astonishing new record of 1,362 performances was bested in 1892 by Charley's Aunt by Brandon Thomas.[2]After W. S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde became the leading poet and dramatist of the late Victorian period.[3]Wilde's plays, in particular, stand apart from the many now forgotten plays of Victorian times and have a closer relationship to those of the Edwardian dramatists such as George Bernard Shaw, whose career began in the 1890s. Wilde's 1895 comic masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, was the greatest of the plays in which he held an ironic mirror to the aristocracy while displaying virtuosic mastery of wit and paradoxical wisdom. It has remained extremely popular.Children's literatureThe Victorians are credited with 'inventing childhood', partly via their efforts to stop child labour and the introduction of compulsory education. As children began to be able to read, literature for young people became a growth industry, with not only established writers producing works for children (such as Dickens' A Child's History of England) but also a new group of dedicated children's authors. Writers like Lewis Carroll, R. M. Ballantyne and Anna Sewell wrote mainly for children, although they had an adult following. Other authors such as Anthony Hope and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote mainly for adults, but their adventure novels are now generally classified as for children. Other genres include nonsense verse, poetry which required a childlike interest (e.g. Lewis Carroll). School stories flourished: Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays and Kipling's Stalky & Co. are classics.Rarely were these publications designed to capture a child’s pleasure; however, with the increase in use of illustrations, children began to enjoy literature, and were able to learn morals in a more entertaining way.[4]With the newfound acceptance of reading for pleasure, fairy tales and folk tales became popular. Compiling folk tales by many authors with different topics made it possible for children to read literature by and about lots of different things that interested them. There were different types of books and magazines written for boys and girls. Girls' stories tended to be domestic and to focus on family life, whereas boys' stories were more about adventures.[5][6]Science, philosophy and discoveryCharles Darwin's work On the Origin of Species affected society and thought in the Victoria era, and still does today.The Victorian era was an important time for the development of science and the Victorians had a mission to describe and classify the entire natural world. Much of this writing does not rise to the level of being regarded as literature but one book in particular, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, remains famous. The theory of evolution contained within the work shook many of the ideas the Victorians had about themselves and their place in the world. Although it took a long time to be widely accepted, it would dramatically change subsequent thought and literature. Much of the work of popularizing Darwin's theories was done by his younger contemporary Thomas Henry Huxley, who wrote widely on the subject.A number of other non-fiction works of the era made their mark on the literature of the period. The philosophical writings of John Stuart Mill covered logic, economics, liberty and utilitarianism. The large and influential histories of Thomas Carlyle: The French Revolution, A History and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History permeated political thought at the time. The writings of Thomas Babington Macaulay on English history helped codify the Whig narrative that dominated the historiography for many years. John Ruskin wrote a number of highly influential works on art and the history of art and championed such contemporary figures as J. M. W. Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites. The religious writer John Henry Newman's Oxford Movement aroused intense debate within the Church of England, exacerbated by Newman's own conversion to Catholicism, which he wrote about in his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua.A number of monumental reference works were published in this era, most notably the Oxford English Dictionary which would eventually become the most important historical dictionary of the English language. Also published during the later Victorian era were the Dictionary of National Biography and the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.Nature writingSee also: Nature writingIn the USA, Henry David Thoreau's works and Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours (1850) were canonical influences on Victorian nature writing. In the UK, Philip Gosse and Sarah Bowdich Lee were two of the most popular nature writers in the early part of the Victorian era.[7]The Illustrated London News, founded in 1842, was the world's first illustrated weekly newspaper and often published articles and illustrations dealing with nature; in the second half of the 19th century, books, articles, and illustrations on nature became widespread and popular among an increasingly urbanized reading public.Supernatural and fantastic literatureThe old Gothic tales that came out of the late 19th century are the first examples of the genre of fantastic fiction. These tales often centred on larger-than-life characters such as Sherlock Holmes, famous detective of the times, Sexton Blake, Phileas Fogg, and other fictional characters of the era, such as Dracula, Edward Hyde, The Invisible Man, and many other fictional characters who often had exotic enemies to foil. Spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a particular type of story-writing known as gothic. Gothic literature combines romance and horror in attempt to thrill and terrify the reader. Possible features in a gothic novel are foreign monsters, ghosts, curses, hidden rooms and witchcraft. Gothic tales usually take place in locations such as castles, monasteries, and cemeteries, although the gothic monsters sometimes cross over into the real world, making appearances in cities such as London.The influence of Victorian literatureHarriet Beecher Stowe wrote Victorian fiction outside Victoria's domains.Writers from the United States and the British colonies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada were influenced by the literature of Britain and are often classed as a part of Victorian literature, although they were gradually developing their own distinctive voices.[8]Victorian writers of Canadian literature include Grant Allen, Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill. Australian literature has the poets Adam Lindsay Gordon and Banjo Paterson, who wrote Waltzing Matilda, and New Zealand literature includes Thomas Bracken and Frederick Edward Maning. From the sphere of literature of the United States during this time are some of the country's greats including: Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Henry James, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman.The problem with the classification of "Victorian literature" is the great difference between the early works of the period and the later works which had more in common with the writers of the Edwardian period and many writers straddle this divide. People such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker, H. Rider Haggard, Jerome K. Jerome and Joseph Conrad all wrote some of their important works during Victoria's reign but the sensibility of their writing is frequently regarded as Edwardian.Other Victorian writersSamuel Butler (1835–1902)Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861)Wilkie Collins (1824–1889)A. E. Housman (1859–1936)William Henry Giles Kingston (1814–1880)Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838)Mary Louisa Molesworth (1839–1921)George Moore (1852–1933)Walter Pater (1839–1894)Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)John Ruskin (1819–1900)Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)John Millington Synge (1871-1909)William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)See alsoChildren's literature portalBritish literatureBritish regional literatureIndustrial novelEnglish literatureNotesJump up ^ Introduction and Notes for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Penguin Books. 1996. ISBN 978-0-14-043474-3.Jump up ^ "Article on long-runs in the theatre before 1920". Stars of the Edwardian Stage. Retrieved 15 September 2012.Jump up ^ Stedman, Jane W. (1996). W. S. Gilbert, A Classic Victorian & His Theatre, pp. 26–29. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816174-3Jump up ^ Evans, Denise; Onorato, Mary. "Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism". enotes. Gale Cengage. Retrieved 16 June 2014.Jump up ^ Khale, Brewster. "Early Children's Literature". Children's Books in the Victorian Era. International Library of Children's Literature. Retrieved 16 June 2014.Jump up ^ Susina, Jan. "Children's Literature". Internet FAQ Archives - Online Education. The Gale Group, Inc. Retrieved 16 June 2014.Jump up ^ Dawson, Carl (1979). Victorian High Noon: English Literature in 1850. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press.Jump up ^ http://www.online-literature.com/periods/victorian.phpExternal linksThe Victorian WebVictorian Literature - Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians at the British LibraryVictorian Women Writers ProjectVictorian Studies BibliographyVictorian LinksVictorian Short Fiction ProjectMostly-Victorian.com – Victorian literature from magazines such as The Strand.[1] – Victorian Writers and PoetsPreceded byRomanticismVictorian literature1837–1901Succeeded byModernism<img src="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAutoLogin/start?type=1x1" alt="" title="" width="1" height="1" style="border: none; position: absolute;" />Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Victorian_literature&oldid=759397094"Categories:Victorian cultureEnglish literatureHidden categories:Pages using ISBN magic linksEngvarB from November 2013Use dmy dates from November 2013Articles needing additional references from March 2008All articles needing additional referencesNavigation menuPersonal toolsNot logged inTalkContributionsCreate accountLog inNamespacesArticleTalkVariantsViewsReadEditView historyMoreSearchNavigationMain pageContentsFeatured contentCurrent eventsRandom articleDonate to WikipediaWikipedia storeInteractionHelpAbout WikipediaCommunity portalRecent changesContact pageToolsWhat links hereRelated changesUpload fileSpecial pagesPermanent linkPage informationWikidata itemCite this pagePrint/exportCreate a bookDownload as PDFLanguagesالعربيةEspañolفارسیFrançaisItalianoМакедонскиBahasa MelayuNederlandsNorsk bokmålРусскийEdit linksThis page was last modified on 10 January 2017, at 22:38.Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. 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