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Home / Historical Periods / Victorian and Edwardian Britain / Victorian Era

Period

Victorian Era

1837–1901 CE

The Victorian Era ran from 1837 to 1901 and reshaped Britain through industrialisation, urban growth, railways, mass print culture and imperial expansion. It was an age of confidence and anxiety, with wealth, invention and empire standing beside poverty, disease, workhouses and overcrowded cities. Its social codes, class divisions and moral language make it one of the most recognisable settings in nineteenth-century historical fiction.

The period mattered because modern Britain was visibly taking shape: factories expanded, cities grew, political reform widened, and public debates over religion, science, labour, crime and women’s roles intensified. The British Empire reached its largest cultural presence, while domestic reform movements challenged the cost of industrial progress. Victorian history is therefore as much about the street, the home and the factory as it is about parliament and empire.

Victorian fiction and fiction set in the Victorian world connect directly to Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Anthony Trollope, while modern historical novels by Sarah Waters, Michel Faber, Laura Purcell and Elizabeth Macneal use the period for crime, class, theatre, sex, medicine and social pressure. Series fiction also works strongly here, from Anne Perry's Victorian mysteries to C. S. Harris's late-Georgian/Regency edge and Oscar de Muriel's darker Victorian investigations. A Victorian archive page can therefore move between canonical nineteenth-century novels and modern historical series set among factories, railways, workhouses, drawing rooms and city streets.

Related people for Victorian Era

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington1769–1852 Barghash bin Said of Zanzibarc. 1837–1888 Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881 Charles George Gordon1833–1885 Dost Mohammad Khan1793–1863 FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan1788–1855 Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts1832–1914 George III1738–1820 George VI1895–1952 Haile Selassie1892–1975 Henry Montgomery Lawrence1806–1857 Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston1784–1865 Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener1850–1916 Horatio Nelson1758–1805 James Brooke1803–1868 James Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie1812–1860 James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan1797–1868 John Lawrence, 1st Baron Lawrence1811–1879 Jomo Kenyatta1893–1978 Joseph Chamberlain1836–1914 Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948 Majid bin Said of Zanzibar1834–1870 Menelik II1844–1913 Mohammad Akbar Khan1816–1845 Muhammad Ahmad1844–1885 Napoleon1769–1821 Napoleon III1808–1873 Otto von Bismarck1815–1898 Paul Kruger1825–1904 Ranavalona I1788–1861 Rani Lakshmibai1828–1858 Ranjit Singh1780–1839 Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley1760–1842 Robert Baden-Powell1857–1941 Robert Napier, 1st Baron Napier of Magdala1810–1890 Shah Shujah Durrani1780–1842 Taytu Betul1851–1918 Tewodros II1818–1868 Tipu Sultan1751–1799 Victoria1819–1901 Wilhelm II1859–1941 William Brydon1811–1873 William George Keith Elphinstone1782–1842 William Pitt the Younger1759–1806 Winston Churchill1874–1965

Series

Series about Victorian Era (5 series)

Kit Killigrew Naval Adventures in Order

by Jonathan Lunn 5 books 4.2

The Kit Killigrew Naval Adventures follow an idealistic Royal Navy officer during the final decades of sail and the early age of steam. From suppressing the Atlantic slave trade and policing the South Pacific to Arctic exploration and the naval campaigns of the Crimean War, Killigrew undertakes missions…

Queen Victoria: in Order

by Jean Plaidy 4 books 4.4

The Queen Victoria quartet follows Victoria from her controlled childhood at Kensington Palace through her early reign, marriage to Prince Albert and long widowhood. The novels trace the growth of a young sovereign into the symbolic centre of nineteenth-century monarchy while examining the political and personal relationships that…

The Flashman Papers in Order

by George MacDonald Fraser 12 books 4.2

The Flashman Papers present the supposed memoirs of Sir Harry Paget Flashman, the bully expelled from Rugby School in Tom Brown’s School Days who becomes a decorated Victorian soldier despite being a coward, liar, opportunist and sexual predator. George MacDonald Fraser places this fictional witness inside documented nineteenth-century…

The Rockwood Chronicles in Order

by Dilly Court 8 books 4.6

The Rockwood Chronicles follows the Carey and Blanchard families as they struggle to preserve Rockwood Castle and rebuild their fortunes in Victorian England. Beginning with Rosalind Carey’s attempt to save the crumbling Devon estate, the sequence expands through marriages, widowhood, adoption and the lives of young women drawn…

Books

30 Best Novels About the Victorian Era

Bestselling authors first, then star rating.

Non Fiction

16 Non-Fiction Books About the Victorian Era

Histories, biographies and reference works are listed separately from the historical novels above.