London in the nineteenth century / by Sir Walter Besant.

  • Walter Besant
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: London in the nineteenth century / by Sir Walter Besant. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    43/490 page 21
    The Literary character of this period—'indeed of the whole decade of the ’thirties—is singularly weak. It was a time of transition ; Wordsworth, Milman, Southey, Lady Blessington, Tom Moore, Beckford, Leigh Hunt, Landor, and Peacock had had their day; Dickens, Thackeray, Marryat, Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Lytton, who were all beginning at this time, had their future before them and belong to a later date. CHARLES DICKENS From a photograph by Mason. The principal output was the novel. The purchasers and circulators of the novel were the book-clubs. There was also a vast torrent of verse in imitation of Scott; this also was bought by the book-clubs. For a long time these clubs and their subscribers endured the appearance of novels which simply could not be read. Nobody can understand how the world suffered the fashionable novel so long. At last, however, came the crash. The subscribers revolted; the book-club fell to pieces, and then, for a time, the novel perished. The works of Marryat,
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