The Victorian Era of the United Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 to January 1901. This was a long period of prosperity for the British people, as profits gained from the overseas British Empire, as well as from industrial improvements at home, allowed a large, educated middle class to develop. .

Some Important Victorians:

1806 1861 Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Poet, Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), The title to the sonnets of the poet Luis de Camões; in all these poems she used rhyme schemes typical of the Portuguese sonnets.
1809 1882 Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species
1809 1892 Alfred Tennyson – Poet, “The Lady of Shalott”, “The Kraken”
1811 1863 William Makepeace Thackeray – Vanity Fair
1812 1888 Edward Lear – renowned for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularized.
1812 1889 Robert Browning – Poet, Dramatic Monologues: “My Last Duchess”, “Fra Lippo Lippi”
1812 1870 Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol, The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Great Expectations
1814 1873 Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Carmilla, a compelling tale of a lesbian vampire. This story was to greatly influence Bram Stoker in the writing of Dracula.
1816 1855 Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre
1818 1848 Emily Jane Brontë – Wuthering Heights
*1818 1883 Karl Marx – German philosopher, political economist, historian. The Communist Manifesto
1819 1880 George Eliot – The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, She used a male pen to ensure that her works were taken seriously.
1821 1890 Sir Richard Francis Burton – Explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. The Book of One Thousand Nights and A Night (The Arabian Nights)
1822 1888 Matthew Arnold – Poet, sometimes called the third great Victorian poet, along with Tennyson and Robert Browning
1824 1889 William Wilkie Collins – Novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. The Woman in White
1827 1910 William Holman Hunt – Painter, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
1828 1882 Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Poet, Illustrator, Painter and Translator, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
*1828 1905 Jules Gabriel Verne – French author, pioneer of science-fiction. A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869–1870), Around the World in Eighty Days.
1829 1862 Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal – Artists' model, poet and artist who was painted and drawn extensively by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
1829 1896 Sir John Everett Millais – Painter and illustrator, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
1830 1894 Christina Rossetti – Poet, A Goblin Market
1832 1898 Lewis Carroll – Author, Mathematician, Anglican Deacon And Photographer, Alice in Wonderland
1837 1909 Algernon Charles Swinburne – Poet, considered a decadent poet
1839 1894 Walter Pater – Essayist, Critic Of Art And Literature, And Writer Of Fiction. Studies In The History Of The Renaissance
1840 1928 Thomas Hardy – Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)
1843 1916 Henry James – The Wings of the Dove (1902) The Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
1844 1889 Gerard Manley Hopkins – Poet, Roman Catholic Convert, and Jesuit Priest
1847 1912 Abraham "Bram" Stoker – Novelist and Short Story Writer, Horror Novel Dracula
1849 1917 John William Waterhouse – Painter, The Lady of Shalott
1850 1894 Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson – Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, Treasure Island
1854 1900 Oscar Wilde – The Picture Of Dorian Gray
1856 1925 Sir Henry Rider Haggard – Writer of adventure novels, like King Solomon's Mines, a quest into an unexplored region of Africa led by Allan Quatermain.
*1856 1939 Sigmund Freud – Austrian Psychiatrist, The Interpretation of Dreams
1857 1924 Joseph Conrad – The Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent (1907)
1859 1930 Sir Arthur I. Conan Doyle – Sherlock Holmes, Lost World.

*Jack the Ripper is a pseudonym given to an unidentified serial killer active in the impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London, in late 1888.