Victorian period

Cultural  

1. The period of British history when Queen Victoria ruled; it includes the entire second half of the nineteenth century, a time when Britain was the most powerful nation in the world. The Victorian period was known for a rather stern morality. It was also marked by a general earnestness about life and by a confidence that Britain's domestic prosperity (see Industrial Revolution) and vast holdings overseas (see British Empire) were signs of the country's overall righteousness (see white man's burden). As the Victorian period continued, however, such easy beliefs were increasingly challenged.

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The Victorian period produced a great number of diverse writers and thinkers. (See Robert Browning; Charles Darwin; Charles Dickens; Rudyard Kipling; John Stuart Mill; Robert Louis Stevenson; and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.)

Example Sentences

Tonnes of objects were found in the former cesspits and brick-lined wells of the homes, revealing objects like glassware, pottery and clay pipes, originating from Roman times to the Victorian period.

From BBC • Jan. 18, 2026

I love horror movies set during the Victorian period.

From Salon • Jun. 21, 2023

And in the Victorian period, some publishers used binding cloth dyed with colors like Scheele’s green, an industrially produced hue also containing arsenic.

From New York Times • Mar. 9, 2023

“The piece itself lived very well in its original Victorian period setting, partly because of the issues of light and technology in the play that really are the crux of the action,” she said.

From Seattle Times • Apr. 22, 2022

Among the general mass of the population in the early Victorian period, smoking, though certainly not so all-prevailing as now, was yet very common.

From The Social History of Smoking by Apperson, George Latimer