From the death of Scott to the death of George Eliot - that is, from 1832 until 1880 - this volume covers the great novelists of the high Victorian age: the period when the novel came into its own. Professor Horsman shows how the upsurge of new novelists, and the great increase in numbers of titles published, was grounded in the political, social, and demographic changes that took place as the political unease of the first decades covered here gave way to greater stability. Against this background he places the great and minor novelists, devoting separate chapters to Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontes, George Eliot, Trollope, and Meredith.