This course investigates the literature and culture of the period from the beginning of the French Revolution to the dawn of the twentieth century, a span in which literary writing responded to a modernizing world. Events from the Romantic movement to the Industrial Revolution, the theory of evolution, the long reign of Queen Victoria, the expansion of the British Empire, and the beginning of workers’ and women’s rights movements had profound impacts on what people wrote, what they wanted to read, and how they envisioned the purpose of literature in society. We will focus on the development of three different genres of writing?poems, essays, and novels?as we look at the major trends of Romantic and Victorian literature.