Although the Victorian era closed, literally, with the death of the Queen in January 1901, the post-Victorian transition had begun decades earlier. Farewell, Victoria! presents Stanley Weintraub’s engaging perspectives on late-Victorian literature, primarily but not exclusively its fiction, which looked backward to popular antecedents and forward to the societal and technological future.

The early 1880s saw the close of iconic Victorian literary careers—Disraeli, Rossetti, Eliot, Meredith, and Trollope among others. It was also the decade of new reputations that would continue in some cases into the middle of the next century. The 1890s witnessed a plethora of experiments in modernity. The Yellow Book and The Savoy, graphic realism and a redefinition of morals, futuristic prophecy and exotic fantasy would expand taste, enlarge the market for books, and write a finis to leftovers from the past.

Stanley Weintraub (Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University and Adjunct Professor of English at the University of Delaware) offers more than a dozen critiques of the literature of these two decades, essays from many years collected, revised, and updated in this important addition to the 1880–1920 British Authors series. He is one of the most well-known and respected scholars in the field, author or editor of more than fifty books, many dealing with the Victorians and early moderns, including biographies of Victoria, Albert, Disraeli, Whistler, Shaw, and the Rossettis.