Industrial novel

The industrial novel is a genre of early Victorian literature. A subclass of the social novel, it portrays the difficult conditions of life of the urban working class during the Industrial Revolution. Many industrial novels featured sympathetic portrayals of Chartists or strikers.

Examples

Typical examples of the genre are:^[1]

• 1845 : Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil, or the Two Nations
• 1848 : Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton
• 1849 : Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke
• 1854 : Charles Dickens' Hard Times and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South
• 1866 : George Eliot's Felix Holt

• 1988 : David Lodge's Nice Work is a modern take on the industrial novel

Further reading

• Childers, Joseph W. (2001). "Industrial culture and the Victorian novel". In The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel (David, Deirde, ed.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. (ISBN 0-521-64619-7)
• Gallagher, Catherine. (1985). The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction: Social Discourse and Narrative Form, 1832–1867. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
• Williams, Raymond. (1958). Culture and Society, 1780–1950. New York, Columbia University Press.

References