Part One - Introduction Part Two - A Cultural Overview Part Three - Texts, Writers and Contexts Victorian Poetry - Memory and Mourning: The Brownings, Swinburne and Alfred, Lord Tennyson Extended commentary: Tennyson, In Memoriam The Social Problem Novel: Charles Dickens, Charles Kingsley and Elizabeth Gaskell Extended Commentary: Gaskell, North and South (1855) The Provincial or Regional Novel: Anthony Trollope, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy Extended Commentary: Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd Sensation Fiction: Wilkie Collins, Ellen Wood and Mary Elizabeth Braddon Extended Commentary: Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret (1862) Victorian Drama: Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Extended Commentary: Shaw, Mrs Warren's Profession (1893) Aesthetes and Decadents: Walter Pater, Arthur Symonds, J. K. Huysmans and Oscar Wilde Extended Commentary: Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) Part Four: Critical theories and Debates Reader Reception and the popular author New women, New Readers The Literature of Empire and National Identity Science, Eugenics and Evolution Part Five - References and resources Timeline Further reading Index