Charles Dickens

His famous novels are The Pickwick Papers (1837), Oliver Twist (1838, was first published with the title Oliver
Twist with a subtitle, The Parish boys Progress ), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1841),
Barnaby Rudge (1841), Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son (1844), David Copperfield (1850) , Bleak House
(1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861), Our
Mutual Friend (1865), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished, 1870). Apart from these he has also written many
short stories, essays and travel books. Dickens has given his many literary contributions with the pen name Bos .
The novels of Dickens were also the most important product and expression in fiction of the humanitarian
movement of the Victorian era. From first to last he was a novelist with a purpose. He was a staunch champion of
the weak, the outcast and the oppressed, and in almost all his novels he attacked one abuse or the other in the
existing system of things. It is, therefore, no exaggeration to say that humanitarianism is the key-note of his work,
and on account of the tremendous popularity that he enjoyed as a novelist, Dickens may justly be regarded as one of
the foremost reformers of his age.

William Makepeace Thackeray

Thackery imitated the tradition of Fielding and Goldsmith. His novels are concerned with the higher state
of life and people instead of poor. He presents the picture of eighteenth-century English society. His characters are
not produced in order to express violent feelings but we find strange qualities in his characters. His best known
novel 'Vanity Fair' is about the adventure of two girls. Apart from his historical novels he wrote 'Pendennis' and 'The
Newcomes'.
Thackeray is, first of all, a realist, who paints life as he sees it. As he says of himself, I have no brains above my
eyes; I describe what I see. He gives in his novels accurate and true picture especially of the vicious elements of
society. As he possesses an excessive sensibility, and a capacity for fine feelings and emotions like Dickens, he is
readily offended by shams, falsehood and hypocrisy in society. The result is that he satirises them. It was with the
publication of Vanity Fair in 1846 that the English reading public began to understand what a star had risen in
English letters.

THOMAS

HARDY

The greatest novelist of the later Victorian period was Thomas Hardy. His well-known novels are The Desperate
Remedies (1871, first novel), Under the Greenwood Tree (1872, first Wessex novel), Far from the Madding
Crowd (1874), The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of the Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the DUrbervilles
(1891), Jude the Obscure (1895, last novel). Apart from these he has also written poems and short stories.
On account of Hardys philosophy of a malignant power ruling the universe which thwarts and defeats man at every
step, his novels are full of coincidences. The main contribution of Hardy to the history of the English novel was that
he made it as serious a medium as poetry, which could deal with the fundamental problems of life. His novels can be
favourably compared to great poetic tragedies, and the characters therein rise to great tragic heights. His greatest
quality as a writer is his sincerity and his innate sympathy for the poor and the down-trodden.