Carte de visite photograph.(4"x 2 1/2"). No photographer's imprint (though from the 1867 Gurney sitting). Mount trimmed and corners rounded ,o/w vg condition.
The English novel came of age in the Victorian period. There had been a decline in novel writing at the beginning of the century, partly because fiction had turned to horror and crude emotionalism and partly because of religious and moral objections to the reading of novels. In the Victorian period attitudes toward the novel were to change. With the rise of the popular magazine, authors began to experiment with serialized fiction. Soon they were writing novels. Such was the beginning of Dickens' 'Sketches by Boz' (1836) . Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812 – 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognized him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are still widely read today.