English literature in the second half of the 19 century

The second half of the 19th century witnessed a rapid growth of social contradictions which were caused by a deep economic crisis. This period was characterized by a crisis in bourgeois culture, too. Artists, poets novelists, musicians and all the intellectuals hated this heartless world, which disturbed the development of the human personality.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is a great representative of the late 19th century realism in England. He was born in Dorsetshire, a country in the south-west of England. He was the son of an architect. He attended grammar school and studied architecture. His father's cottage was in a picturesque village.

At the age of 22 Hardy left for London. Hard reading, the study and practice of architecture and the writing poetry were his life there. In his 27th year he gave up living in London, turned to prose fiction and for his setting chose his own part of England.

Herbert Wells (1866-1946) is a novelist and Journalist. He was brought up in the lower middle class, the son of a professional cricketer; in 1888 he took an excellent degree in science at London University. His social origins and his education explain much of his approach to life as a writer. The great novelist of the 19th century lower middle classes is Dickens and some of G. H. Wells' best fiction is about the same field of society; novels such as Kips (1905) and The History of Mr. Polly (1910) are of this sort, and they have the kind of vigorous humor and sharp visualization that is characteristic of early Dickens.

Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) was born in Dublin on October 16, 1856. His father was a famous Irish surgeon and his mother was a poetess. In his youth he was very much influenced by his mother, who was a highly educated woman. He received a very good education at Trinity College in Dublin and Oxford University. At school he was a brilliant pupil and later at Oxford he displayed considerable gifts in art and humanities. The young man received a number of classical prizes, and graduated with first - class honours. While at the University, under the influence of his teacher, the writer John Ruskin, Wilde joined the then young "aesthetic movement", which came into being as a protest against bourgeois hypocrisy, but later turned reactionary. The future writer became a most sincere supporter of this movement.