On 1 September 1851 the poet Matthew Arnold was on his honeymoon. Catching a ferry from Dover to Calais, he sat down and worked on a poem that would become emblematic of the fears and anxieties of a generation of Victorians. It is called Dover Beach and it finishes like this:
“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night”.
But was Arnold’s pessimism shared by his fellow Victorians? What events and ideas were driving it on and were any of their concerns about race and religion, class and culture borne out as the 19th century drew to a close?
Contributors
Dinah Birch, Professor of English at the University of Liverpool
Rosemary Ashton, Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London
Peter Mandler, University Lecturer and Fellow in History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
