The Victorian Age introduces students of nineteenth-century literary and cultural history to the main areas of intellectual debate in the Victorian period. Bringing together for the first time in one volume a wide range of primary source material, this anthology gives readers a unique insight into the ways in which different areas of Victorian intellectual debate were interconnected. The Victorian Age covers developments in social and political theory, economics, science and religion, aesthetics, and sexuality and gender, and provides access to a range of documents which have hitherto been highly inaccessible - both difficult to locate and difficult to interpret and understand. This authoritative anthology contains: * a general introduction which explains the various ways in which the relationships between literary and intellectual culture can be theorised * essays describing the background to the areas of debate illustrated by the selected source documents * bibliographical notes on all the documents included * brief accounts of the reputation and career of the documents' authors. This volume will enable humanities students, as well as the general reader, to understand complex areas of debates in an unusually wide range of disciplines, several of which will be unfamiliar.