Help, please

[LadyWindermere]

Hi to all of you,

I was wondering whether including Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Horace Walpole, Mrs Ann Radcliffe, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley in the same group of novelists under the title romanticism: novel and poetry is correct. I specified some of belonging to gothic, others to Victorian novel and others to novel of purpose within the framework of romanticism and then I also mentioned poets such as William Blake, WIlliam Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bisshey Shelley, Lord Byron and John Keats.

Many thanks

[Danik 2016]

Welcome Lady Windemere,
I suggest you take a look at a trustworthy History of English Literature and see how they are classified there.
If you study English Literature you certainly have access to a good library. These literature history books often have an analytical index with the names of the authors at the end.

[Jackson Richardson]

And welcome from me.

The first three are Victorian novelists and were writing at the same time.

The others are before Victoria. Walpole, Radcliffe and Mary Shelley would usually be called Gothic novelists. They cover a long period. Walpole’s Castle of Otranto was published 1764 and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818.

Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, apparently wrote novels, but she is mainly known as the author of The Vindication of the Rights of Women and her novels as far as I know are not widely studied. She is principally a novelist.

[Jackson Richardson]

PS You could argue that Dickens and Charlotte Bronte are romantic - and definitely Emily Bronte. But Thackeray is far more satiric. (Dickens is satiric in large part, but there is more to him.)

[Pompey Bum]

Welcome to the site, Lady Windermere. It's very nice to meet you. :)

JR is the authority where Dickens is concerned so anything I say is ancillary to him. Dickens could be thought of as a romantic writer because of his reliance on sentiment and his advocacy of the common man (however bourgeois in comparison with someone like Byron). But Dickens was also an unflinching realist in his depiction of poverty. And oddly enough he was a brilliant satirist. So Dickens is a complicated author who defies easy categorization.

Thackeray was a conservative satirist. In addition to writing Vanity Fair (and Barry Lyndon) he was a frequent contributor to Punch. But as he grew older he wished to be more than that and wrote a number of picaresque or historical novels, some of which aren't read much today. At his best, Thackeray is like Dickens minus the saccharin. But it is probably fair to call him an inconsistent novelist in comparison to an author like Dickens. And I don't think I'd call him a romantic. Thackeray wants to make fun of the common man, not to idealize him.

I hope that helped at least some.

[Jackson Richardson]

I don’t know if Lady Windermere is still around, but this has made me think a bit.

Dickens, Thackeray and Charlotte Bronte could all be called realistic novelists in that they describe the social relations and physical environment of a specific period, either contemporary or within living memory.

Walpole and Radcliffe set their stories abroad in the past at some unspecified time, or at least with no historic details. Walpole includes definitely supernatural events and Radcliffe hints there are (although there is a rational explanation eventually). Shelley’s Frankenstein is contemporary in setting and supposedly scientific, but is mythic rather than social in its setting.

The link between to two approaches is Sir Walter Scott –who comes between the two groups in time – his novels and narrative poems published between 1805 and 1832. His stories are set in the past, but a past researched in detail with a detailed awareness of the political, social and physical background. They are certainly romantic but in a sense they are precursors of the Victorian realistic novel. They are far more politically acute than Dickens or Thackeray. This is not to say that nowadays we find Scott’s political views, historical research and turgid prose hard to take. But in terms of the history of the novel he is very important.

[Pompey Bum]

The link between to two approaches is Sir Walter Scott –who comes between the two groups in time – his novels and narrative poems published between 1805 and 1832. His stories are set in the past, but a past researched in detail with a detailed awareness of the political, social and physical background. They are certainly romantic but in a sense they are precursors of the Victorian realistic novel. They are far more politically acute than Dickens or Thackeray. This is not to say that nowadays we find Scott’s political views, historical research and turgid prose hard to take. But in terms of the history of the novel he is very important.

That is insightful JR. It's helpful to me as someone who could never figure out what the fuss was over Scott. So even though he was a romantic, his research compelled a degree of realism at least in principle. And even though that vision was not fulfilled by Scott, it opened new vistas to those writing about less remote times. That gives me ideas my own writing, which also involves research. Thank you.

[Jackson Richardson]

I was rather pleased to come out with that. Lady Windermere made me think of the contrast between Radcliffe and Dickens, and then I saw Scott as the link.

I've just finished reading Rookwood by Harrison Ainsworth (1830s) which was a vastly popular historical novel. Full of dramatic scenes (Dick Turpin's ride to York, gipsy encampment, an opening scene in a crypt where the old sexton reveals a dark secret to his grandson) but very little characterisation or consistency of plot. It made me see how sound Scott was.

And totally lacking in Scott's awareness of any political situation. That's why Scott's novels set prior to the English Civil War are far less convincing, because in the others he was writing about the background to the political reality of his own times.

[Pompey Bum]

It's funny the way literary cultures produce so-called timeless classics that leave future generations scratching their noggins at what their elders may have been thinking. Louisa May Alcott comes to mind. She's enchanting or funny at her best, but, yikes!, did you ever read Little Men? I've been going through Roderick Random, a picaresque novel by Tobias Smollett, to try to get a first hand account of the Battle of Cartagena de Indias in 1741. Two of my ancestors fought with the British at that horrific defeat. Smollett was there too, as a surgeon's mate, and he passes off some of his experiences as his hero's. This relatively brief section has been interesting (at least to me), but the writing itself seems terribly threadbare. It's like reading an epitome or an abstract of a novel rather than the novel itself. I can't help thinking that in the hands of Thackeray or Fielding or Dickens it would have been an great book. Still, as with Scott, I suppose the novel owes a historical debt to Smollett. Maybe I've just been spoiled by the writers who followed him.

[desiresjab]

It's funny the way literary cultures produce so-called timeless classics that leave future generations scratching their noggins at what their elders may have been thinking. Louisa May Alcott comes to mind. She's enchanting or funny at her best, but, yikes!, did you ever read Little Men? I've been going through Roderick Random, a picaresque novel by Tobias Smollett, to try to get a first hand account of the Battle of Cartagena de Indias in 1741. Two of my ancestors fought with the British at that horrific defeat. Smollett was there too, as a surgeon's mate, and he passes off some of his experiences as his hero's. This relatively brief section has been interesting (at least to me), but the writing itself seems terribly threadbare. It's like reading an epitome or an abstract of a novel rather than the novel itself. I can't help thinking that in the hands of Thackeray or Fielding or Dickens it would have been an great book. Still, as with Scott, I suppose the novel owes a historical debt to Smollett. Maybe I've just been spoiled by the writers who followed him.

I think it likely you have just been spoiled, Pomp.