Page 36 - Knowledge Organiser Yr9 24-25

Knowledge Base: English 19th Century Literature Year 9 | Autumn Term 2
1. Authors and texts studied
1.1
Charles Dickens
(1812-1870) Born in Portsmouth and lived in London. His father went to prison when he was 10 and had to work in a shoe blacking factory which inspired a lot of his work.
1.2
George Eliot
(1819-1880) Born in Warwickshire but moved to Coventry in later life. Wrote under a pseudonym as her real name was Mary Ann Evans.
1.3
Thomas Hardy
(1840-1928). Born and lived in Dorset. Many of his books are set along the south west coast under the fictional title ‘Wessex’.
1.4
Jane Austen
(1775-1819) Born in Basingstoke and lived in Alton and Winchester. Wrote romantic fiction about the gentry
(well born families) and incorporated realism into her work.
1.5
Charlotte Bronte
(1816-1855) Born and lived in Yorkshire. Wrote under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
1.6
Emily Bronte
(1818-1848) Born and lived in Yorkshire. Wrote under the pseudonym Ellis Bell.
1.7
Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850-1894) Born and lived in Edinburgh until later life when he moved to Samoa, an island in the Pacific.
2. Themes
2.1
motherless children
Between 1 and 5 children died before their 5th birthday. 50% of deaths were due to infection.
2.2
women
Until the 1882 Marriage Property Act, upon marriage, everything a woman owned would be passed to her husband, including their children.
2.3
education
Children of wealthy families tended to be educated at home by a governess.
2.4
1834 Poor Laws
The Poor Law ensured that the poor were housed in workhouses, clothed and fed.
3. Vocabulary
3.1
pseudonym (noun)
A fictious name, often used by a writer.
3.2 countenance (noun)
3.3 benevolent (adj.)
3.4 lamentable (adj.)
Appearance, especially the look or expression of the face. Expressing goodwill or kindly feelings.
A thin liquid food of oatmeal or other meal boiled in water.
4. Context
4.1
Industrial Revolution
A rapid major change in an economy marked by the general introduction of power-driven machinery or by an important change in the usual types and methods of use of such machines.
4.2
The Workhouses
Workhouses were where poor people who had no job or home lived. They earned their keep by doing jobs in the workhouse. Also in t he workhouses were orphans (children without parents) and abandoned children, the physically and mentally sick, the disabled, the elderly and unmarried mothers.
4.3
Darwin's Theory of Evolution
Charles Darwin was a British naturalist who proposed the theory of biological evolution by natural selection. Darwin defined evolution as "descent with modification“, the idea that species change over time, give rise to new species, and share a common ancestor.
4.4
Penny Dreadful Shilling Shocker
A short novel characterised by sensational or criminal incidents and shocking writing, especially popular in late Victorian England and originally costing one shilling.
4.5
Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper was an English serial killer. Between August and November 1888, he murdered at least five women- all prostitutes - in or near the Whitechapel district of London's East End. Jack the Ripper was never identified or arrested.
36