This book presents the contexts that generated Victorian literature as we know it: religious dilemmas, new discoveries in science, the advent of industrialisation and the emergence of a new class, growing awareness of women’s rights, and the spread of education. The reign of Queen Victoria was a time of change like it never was before. This book looks at those precincts of change which led to the growth of a new literary creativity encompassing and taking into account the religious, scientific and industrial challenges of the times.