Time: Spring 2026. Tuesdays 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Dates: Feb. 3 – April 14.
Location: Maryland Pkwy campus, 4350 S. Maryland Pkwy. MAB2. Room 139.
Instructor: Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.
Email: ajdrake@ajdrake.com | Web: https://www.ajdrake.com/shakespeare
Required Text (*Editions can sometimes be bought used at lower cost.)
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume E, the Victorian Age. 11th edition. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-54332-2. (*Suggestion: Norton’s “Package 2” consists of vols. D, E, and F and doesn’t cost much more than the single Victorian volume, so it may be a better value.)
Course Description: The British Victorian Period (1837-1901) follows the overlapping Romantic and Regency Eras, and offers students of literature, society, and politics an almost inexhaustible amount of material from which to learn. The Victorian Period was a time of vertiginous changes in the United Kingdom, a time in which faith in progress was high, and yet the old problems—poverty, suffering, violence at home and abroad—continued to take their toll. We will study texts by excellent authors in key genres: poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction.
Guides and Resources
General Databases: Online Books Page ( U-Penn) | HathiTrust | Project Gutenberg | Internet Archive | Perseus Project – Classics (Tufts)
Victorian-Specific Sites: The Victorian Web (G. Landow) | British Lit: Victorian Era (Credo) | Victoria Research Web (Leary) | Victorian Lit. Resources (S. Connecticut SU) | Britain, Representation, and C19 History (BRANCH) | Charles Booth’s London (LSE) | Historical Population Reports (HISTPOP) | Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 | Victorian Women Writers Project (Indiana U) | Studies in Scarlet: Marriage & Sexuality (Harvard) | At the Circulating Library: Victorian Fiction (Vict. Research) | Internet Lib. of Early Journals (Oxford, Defunct) | 19th-Century Serials Edition | Science in the C19 Periodical (SCIPER) | The Workhouse | Carlyle Letters | Works of Darwin | Darwin Correspondence (Cambridge U) | Dickens Project (UC Santa Cruz) | D. G. Rossetti Archive (U. Virginia) | Shelley-Godwin Archive |
Commentaries on Authors (Drake): Will be added as we go through the readings. Carlyle | Mill | E. B. Browning | Brontë | Tennyson | Mayhew | Ruskin | Rob. Browning | Arnold | Stevenson | Pre-Raphaelites Intro | D. G. Rossetti | C. Rossetti | Hopkins | Pater | Wilde
Audio for Authors (Drake): Will be added as we go through the readings. Carlyle | Mill | E. B. Browning | Brontë | Tennyson | Mayhew | Ruskin | Rob. Browning | Arnold | Stevenson | Pre-Raphaelites Intro | D. G. Rossetti | C. Rossetti | Hopkins | Pater | Wilde
SCHEDULE (SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
Week 1 Feb. 03 Course Introduction and Introduction to the Victorian Age.
Week 2 Feb. 10 Thomas Carlyle. From Signs of the Times (88-97), from Past and Present (97-106), from “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question” (42-45).
Week 3 Feb. 17 J. S. Mill. From What Is Poetry? (138-45), from On Liberty (145-57), from The Subjection of Women (157-67), from The Negro Question (46-50).
Week 4 Feb. 24 Elizabeth B. Browning. “The Runaway Slave …” (175-82), from Aurora Leigh, Bk. 5 (195-97). Emily Brontë. “I’m happiest when most away” (457), “The Night-Wind” (457-58), “Stars” (459-60), “No coward soul is mine” (462-63). Alfred Tennyson. “Mariana” (206-08), “Lady of Shalott” (208-13), “Lotos-Eaters” (213-17), “Ulysses” (217-19), “Tithonus” (219-21), from In Memoriam A. H. H. (231-80; 2, 5, 7, 27, 39, 54-56).
Week 5 Mar. 03 Henry Mayhew. From London Labor (332-46). John Ruskin. From Modern Painters (465-69), from The Stones of Venice (469-79), from “The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century” (326-29).
Week 6 Mar. 10 Robert Browning. “The Bishop Orders His Tomb” (416-19), “Caliban upon Setebos” (443-50). Matthew Arnold. “The Buried Life” (564-66), “Dover Beach” (574-75), Preface to Poems (575-85), from Culture and Anarchy (585-92), from Literature and Science (592-605).
Week 7 Mar. 24 Robert Louis Stevenson. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (741-83).
Week 8 Mar. 31 Section on Pre-Raphaelitism: Dickens, Ruskin, W. M. Rossetti, Buchanan (606-16), Dante Gabriel Rossetti. “The Blessed Damozel” (617-21), from The House of Life (632-34). Christina Rossetti. “Song 1” and “Song 2” (635-36), “In an Artist’s Studio” (638), “Winter: My Secret” (639-40), “Up-Hill” (640-41), “No, Thank-You, John” (654).
Week 9 Apr. 07 Gerard Manley Hopkins. “God’s Grandeur” (722), “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” (723), “The Windhover” (724), “Pied Beauty” (725), “Binsey Poplars” (726), “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day” (729), “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire …” (730), “Thou art indeed just, Lord” (730-31). Walter Pater. From Studies in the Histories of the Renaissance (712-19). Oscar Wilde. From “The Critic as Artist” (787-96).
Week 10 Apr. 14 Oscar Wilde. “Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (796-97), The Importance of Being Earnest (797-841).