- Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870), pen-name "Boz", was the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous social campaigner. Considered one of the English language's greatest writers, he was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters, and achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime. Later critics, beginning with George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton, championed his mastery of prose, … - Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and author of short stories. Known for his barbed wit, he was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. As the result of a famous trial, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years of hard labour after being convicted of the offence of "gross indecency". - George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans, better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity. She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, … - John Ruskin
John Ruskin (February 8, 1819 - January 20, 1900) is best known for his work as an art critic and social critic, but is remembered as an author, poet and artist as well. Ruskin's essays on art and architecture were extremely influential in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. - Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. She is perhaps best known for her biography of Charlotte Bronte. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the very poor, and as such are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. - Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian, whose work was hugely influential during the Victorian era. Coming from a strictly Calvinist family, Carlyle was expected by his parents to become a preacher. However, while at the University of Edinburgh, he lost his Christian faith; nevertheless, Calvinist values remained with him throughout his life. - Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr. KBE (April 16, 1889 - December 25, 1977), better known as Charlie Chaplin, was an English comedy actor. Chaplin became one of the most famous performers as well as a notable director and musician in the early to mid Hollywood cinema era. He is considered to be one of the finest mimes and clowns ever caught on film and has greatly influenced performers in this field. - Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope became one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of Trollope's best-loved works, known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire; he also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues and conflicts of his day. Trollope has always remained a popular novelist. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 6, 1806 - June 29, 1861) was a member of the Barrett family and one of the most respected poets of the Victorian era. - Lizzie Borden
Lizzie Andrew Borden was a New England spinster and central figure in the axe murders of her father and stepmother on August 4 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts. Although acquitted, no one else was ever tried, and she has remained notorious in American folklore. The slayings, trial, and the following trial by media became a cause célèbre; and the fame of the incident has endured in American pop culture and criminology. - Henry Irving
John Henry Brodribb, knighted in 1895, as Sir Henry Irving, was one of the most famous stage actors of the Victorian era. - Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as "Ozymandias", "Ode to the West Wind", "To a Skylark", and "The Masque of Anarchy". However, his major works were long visionary poems including "Alastor", "Adonais", "The Revolt of Islam", … - Gertrude Himmelfarb
Gertrude Himmelfarb (born August 8 1922) is an American historian known for her studies of the intellectual history of the Victorian era, particularly of Social Darwinism; and as a conservative cultural critic. She is also known as an outspoken commentator of university education. She received the National Humanities Medal in 2004. She was born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, and was educated at New Utrecht High School and Brooklyn College. - Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton F.R.S. (February 16, 1822 - January 17, 1911), half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician. He was knighted in 1909. Galton had a prolific intellect, and produced over 340 papers and books throughout his lifetime. - Boudica
Boudica (also spelled Boudicca, formerly better known as Boadicea) (d. 60/61) was a queen of the Brythonic Celtic Iceni people of Norfolk in Eastern Britain who led a major uprising of the tribes against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire. Her husband, Prasutagus, the Icenian king, who had ruled as a nominally independent ally of Rome, had left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Roman Emperor in his will, … - Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne (April 5, 1837 - April 10, 1909) was a Victorian era English poet. His poetry was highly controversial in its day, much of it containing recurring themes of sadomasochism, death-wish, lesbianism and irreligion. - George Gilbert Scott
Sir George Gilbert Scott (13 July 1811 - 27 March, 1878) was an English architect of the Victorian Age, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches, cathedrals and workhouses. Born in Gawcott, Buckinghamshire, Scott was the son of a clergyman and grandson of the biblical commentator Thomas Scott. He studied architecture as a pupil of James Edmeston and from 1832 to 1834, worked as an assistant to Henry Roberts. - Joseph Bazalgette
Sir Joseph William Bazalgette (28 March 1819 - 15 March 1891) was one of the great English civil engineers of the Victorian era. As the chief engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works, his major achievement was the creation of a sewer network for central London, which helped relieve the city from cholera epidemics, while beginning the clean-up of the River Thames, which had reached a nadir with "The Great Stink" of 1858. - Ford Madox Brown
Ford Madox Brown (April 16, 1821 - October 6, 1893) was an English painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and often Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. While he was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he was never actually a member. Nevertheless, he remained close to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with whom he also joined William Morris's design company, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., in 1861. - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Mary Elizabeth Braddon (October 4, 1837 - February 4, 1915) was a British Victorian era popular novelist. - George Stephenson
George Stephenson was an English mechanical engineer who designed the famous and historically important steam locomotive named "Rocket" and is known as the "Father of Railways". The Victorians considered him a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement, with self-help advocate Samuel Smiles particularly praising his achievements. His rail gauge of 4 ft 8½ in (1435 mm), sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", is the world's standard gauge. - John Ross
CSgt John Ross, Esq. was a very successful Victorian businessman with substantial retail interests. His fortune was stolen by a lawyer on his death. - Josephine Butler
Josephine Elizabeth Butler was a Victorian era feminist who was especially concerned with the welfare of prostitutes. She led the long campaign for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts from 1869 to 1886. - Michael Cox
Michael Cox is an English biographer and novelist, born in Northamptonshire in 1948. - Victoria Of The United Kingdom
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 - 22 January 1901) was the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837, and the first Empress of India from 1 May 1876, until her death on 22 January 1901. Her reign lasted sixty-three years and seven months, longer than that of any other British monarch. In general, the period centred on her reign is known as the Victorian era. The Victorian era was at the height of the Industrial Revolution, … - Joseph Merrick
Joseph Carey Merrick, known as "The Elephant Man", gained the sympathy of Victorian era Britain because of the extreme deformity of his body. - Alfred Waterhouse
Alfred Waterhouse was an English architect, particularly associated with the Victorian Gothic revival. He is perhaps best known for his design for the Natural History Museum in London, although he also built a wide variety of other buildings throughout the country. Financially speaking, Waterhouse was probably the most successful of all Victorian architects. Though expert within Gothic and Renaissance styles, Waterhouse never limited himself to a single architectural style. - John Thomson
John Thomson was a pioneering Scottish Victorian photographer, geographer and traveller. He was one of the first photographers to travel to the Far East, documenting the people, landscapes and artifacts of eastern cultures. On returning home, his work among the street people of London cemented his reputation, and is regarded as a classic work of social documentary which laid the foundations for photo journalism. - Charles Eastlake
Charles Locke Eastlake (1836 - 1906) was a British architect and furniture designer. Trained by the architect Philip Hardwick (1792-1870) he popularised William Morris's notions of decorative arts in the Arts and Crafts style, becoming one of the principal exponents of the revived "Early English" or "Modern Gothic Style" popular in Victorian architecture. He made no furniture himself, his designs being produced by professional cabinet makers. - William Robinson
William Robinson (1838 - 1935) was a practical gardener and journalist whose ideas about "wild gardens" spurred the movement that is still recognized as the "English cottage garden," an outgrowth of the British Arts and Crafts movement. He advocated planting wild flowers to look wild and reacted against the High Victorian patterned gardening, using tropical materials grown in greenhouses and planted out, … - Algernon Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne (April 5, 1837 - April 10, 1909) was a Victorian era English poet. His poetry was highly controversial in its day, much of it containing recurring themes of sadomasochism, death-wish, lesbianism and irreligion. - John Phillip
John Phillip (1817-1867) was a Victorian era painter best known for his portrayals of Spanish life. He was nicknamed "Spanish Phillip". Born into a poor family in Aberdeen in Scotland, Phillip's artistic talent was recognised at an early age. His education at the Royal Academy of Arts was paid for by a wealthy patron. While at the academy Phillip became a member of The Clique a group of aspirant arists organised by Richard Dadd. - John Sutherland
John Sutherland (born 1938) is an English lecturer, emeritus professor, newspaper columnist and author. Now Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London, John Sutherland began his academic career after graduating from the University of Leicester as an assistant lecturer in Edinburgh in 1964. He specialises in Victorian fiction, 20th century literature, and the history of publishing. - John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 - September 7, 1892) was an American Quaker poet and forceful advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. - Richard Dadd
Richard Dadd was an English painter of the Victorian era, noted for his depictions of fairies and other supernatural subjects, Orientalist scenes, and enigmatic genre scenes, rendered with obsessively minuscule detail. Most of the works for which he is best known were created while he was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital. - William Powell Frith
William Powell Frith (January 19, 1819 - November 9, 1909), was an English painter specialising in portraits and Victorian era narratives, who was elected to the Royal Academy in 1852. - Tom Arnold
Tom Arnold also known as Thomas Arnold the Younger (1823 - 1900) was a British literary professor. He was the second son of the Rugby School headmaster Thomas Arnold and his elder brother was the poet Matthew Arnold. After taking a first at Oxford University, Arnold grew discontented with Victorian Britain and took up farming in New Zealand. Failing to take to this career, Arnold moved to Tasmania, … - Richard Doyle
Richard "Dickie" Doyle (September 1824 - December 11, 1883) was a notable Victorian illustrator. His work frequently appeared, amongst other places, in Punch magazine; he drew the cover of the first issue, and designed the magazine's masthead, a design that was used for over a century. The son of John Doyle (known as 'H.B'), a noted political caricaturist, he had two brothers James and Charles, who were also both artists. - Sidney Paget
Sidney Edward Paget (October 4, 1860 in London - January 28, 1908) was a British illustrator of the Victorian era, who did a great deal of work for "The Strand" magazine. - Edward Woodward
Edward Albert Arthur Woodward (born June 1, 1930 Croydon, Surrey) is an English stage, film and television actor and singer. Originally a Shakespearian stage actor, he is best known for his role in the 1960s spy series, "Callan", his lead role in the 1980s American television series "The Equalizer" and for the 1973 film The Wicker Man.
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