Searching in Shadow: Victorian Prose and Thought

In 1831, the beginning of a cruel decade in iron times for England, Thomas Carlyle observed: “Man has walked by the light of conflagrations and amid the sound of falling cities, and now there is darkness and long watching till it be morning.” Thirty years later Matthew Arnold counseled a faltering friend who had lost his way: “Roam on! The light we sought is shining still.” When the nineteenth century ended, having generated more questions than answers, more problems than solutions, a journalist writing for a London newspaper summed up the struggle in one short sentence: “They searched in shadows, seeking light.” In tumultuous and uncertain times the authors under scrutiny in this volume, masters of English prose, wrote and lectured to lead the nation out of shadow and confusion, or as one put it: “out of the wilderness.” They are in order of appearance Macaulay, Carlyle, Newman, Mill, Ruskin, Arnold, Darwin, Huxley, Morris, Pater, and Stevenson. Others of lesser note are Spencer, Stephen, and Butler.