Victorian Novelists (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

This 1906 collection of short biographies includes chapters on Benjamin Disraeli, William Makepeace Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell, Mrs. Oliphant, Charles Kingsley, Charles Reade, and Walter Besant, among others. Melville asserts that the Victorian period was a time synonymous with “big” writing.