Victorian Era

The Victorian era was the period of time between 1837 and 1901, when Queen Victoria ruled Britain. In North America, these were years of growth and change.

Queen Victoria inherited the throne in 1837, at the age of 18 after her uncle William IV died. Victoria wed her cousin Albert in 1840. He helped bring a frivolous nature to the throne which increased the monarch's popularity among British citizens. The two of them came to symbolize a close-knit family life, a sense of public duty, integrity, and respectability.

After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria remained in seclusion for ten years. She later was crowned the Empress of India in 1876. Throughout her reign she ruled with a conduct of conservitivity, and disliked anyone who didn't agree with this. She died at Osborne on January 22, 1901, at the age of 81. Her reign is the longest in Britain's history, lasting for sixty-four years.

Victoria was not a great ruler or a particularly brilliant woman. She was fortunate through most of her reign in having a succession of politically able Cabinet ministers. She happened, however, to be queen of Great Britain for most of the 19th century--a century that saw more changes than any previous period in history. The queen became a living symbol of peace and prosperity. In idealology, politics, and society, the Victorians created astonishing innovation and change: democracy, feminism, unionization of workers, socialism, Marxism, and other modern movements took form. Governments rose and fell. Industry expanded beyond everyone's wildest dreams. Wages and working conditions steadily improved. A new leisure class expanded. Poets and novelists expressed the Victorians' optimism and religious feeling. Science, literature, and the arts found new meaning. However, it is the architecture, furniture design, and fashion of this period that is most noted as a symbol of the period.

The Victorians called their age "modern" and thought it superior to all past centuries. It was an age that envisioned an indefinite future of progress with peace and plenty.