The Victorian Age (Greenblatt, 2006, pp 1885-1907) has always been one of my favorite literary periods. It was when the agricultural/rural lifestyle gave way to a modern industrialized way of living. ("Steam Punk" reflects this period well, with its manner of dress and industrial elements.) That aside, the Victorian Age was a period of rapid growth and modernization with the implementation of railways, printing presses, photography, and universal education.
For England however, rapid growth caused problems based on unregulated industries that were emerging. Writers took opposing views, i.e. some celebrated the progress, while others wrote about how morals and human happiness ere declining as a result of the rapid progress being made. And although many welcomed the changers, there were those who "suffered from an anxious sense of something lost, a sense too, of people being displaced in a world made alien by technological changes that had been exploited too quickly for the adaptive powers of the human psyche." (Greenblatt, p. 1886)
Writers living during this era helped to define it. "Close the Byron and open thy Goethe" was the sentiment Carlyle impressed upon his contemporaries. "He was saying, in effect, to abandon the introspection of the Romantics and turn to the higher moral purpose that he found in Goethe." And the poets of yesteryear were criticized for making up imaginary characters that lived solely in their minds, not the readers minds, and definitely not in the minds of other writers. (p. 1887)
Moreover, a large bulk of material written during the 1890's reflects this change in sentiment; "a breakdown of a different sort. Melancholy, not gaiety, is characteristic of its spirit." This resulted in the beginning of the Modern Period that is to follow. The Victorian period saw a great many female writers publish novels - the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti, to name a few. Poets began to alter their narrative into longer verse, making them suitable to be novels. Female poets saw this as an opportunity to exploit their talents and great literary works were penned. (p. 1896)
Work Cited:
Greenblatt, S. et al. (Eds.) The Norton Anthology of American Literature: The Romantic Period through the twentieth Century and After. (8th ed., Vol. B). 2006. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.