In 1854, William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) exhibits The Light of the World, a picture that shows Jesus holding a lantern and knocking on a door, symbolically asking to be let into the heart of the viewer. In an age of doubt, it affirms Christian religious belief. Its message is that a saviour, a man-god, can come and redeem sinful humankind.

It's ironic that this image, this enduring Victorian religious icon, is modelled after two women, one of whom is – in the eyes of the age – a fallen sinner. The models for the bearded face of Jesus are Elizabeth Siddal, lover of the painter Gabriel Dante Rossetti (see below) and herself a painter, and the poet Christina Rossetti (see below), Gabriel's sister.

Still, it becomes the most popular of Victorian paintings: Hunt makes four versions of it, it is engraved and millions of photographic reproductions are sold. In 1905, one copy of the original tours the colonies and thousands of people flock to see what they think is a sacred object.

The Victorians like their art to mix moral messages with an easy-to-understand format, such as that of the realistic novel or the narrative poem. But this is also an era of expanding leisure and the mass marketing of culture. While the working classes mainly follow sport and music hall, the middle-class patronises a boom in art galleries, concert halls and publishing. For example, the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester is founded in 1857; the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, paid for by the mayor A B Walker (to the tune of about £60,000), opens in 1877; and Her Majesty's Theatre in London is established in 1897. These are also frequented by the respectable working classes.

Finally, this is the age of self-improvement and of the gifted amateur: the new local libraries are full of enthusiastic local natural historians, astronomers and geologists. Reading habits are stimulated from 1850 by rate-assisted free libraries in most cities and towns. By 1887, there are 133 free libraries throughout the country and the 1892 Public Libraries Act results in the setting up of even more.

But culture is a contested territory. In a society experiencing rapid change, there are lots of arguments – articulated by thinkers such as Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin – about what role of art should play and what should be considered beautiful. In architecture, these arguments take on a fierce tone.

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The novel

The quintessential Victorian art form is the novel. In a series of realistically described episodes that have to observe certain proprieties – avoiding details of sexual relations or even pregnancy – the typical Victorian novel depicts a panoramic view of society and tells the story of an individual growing to maturity through a number of trials and tribulations. Good examples are Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1837), David Copperfield (1849-50) and Great Expectations (1860-1).

Dickens is the most popular novelist of Victorian Britain, a titan whose prodigious energy, gift for caricature, immense personality and vivid writing style put him head and shoulders above the competition. He stresses social conditions in urban society, and draws on his memories of childhood passions.

Detectives and science fiction

But he is not alone: William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), Anthony Trollope (1815-82), George Meredith (1829-1909), Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), George Gissing (1857-1903) and Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) also write bestsellers. Wilkie Collins (1824-89) invents the detective mystery novel. In 1895, The War of the Worlds by H G Wells (1866-1946) pioneers science fiction. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1847-1912) appeals to the dark side of the Victorian imagination. Even the future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) writes novels (for example, Sybil, or The Two Nations, 1845).

Pseudonyms

Novel writing also appeals to women because it is an art form that you can undertake in the privacy of your own home. Many women novelists publish their books under male pseudonyms. For example, in 1847, two new books appear: Jane Eyre by 'Currer Bell' (Charlotte Brontë) and Wuthering Heights by 'Ellis Bell' (Emily Brontë). George Eliot (1819-80) is the name adopted by Mary Ann Evans to front her perceptive and psychologically acute novels – from Adam Bede (1859) through Middlemarch (1871-2) to Daniel Deronda (1878) – which are all critical of society. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65), the wife of a Unitarian minister in Manchester, uses her real name for her cogent accounts of industrial strife and working-class life in Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855).

Most Victorian novels are published in a number of different forms. Often written as serials, they are published in bestselling magazines such as Household Words (set up by Dickens in 1850). They are then reissued as three-volume novels, often illustrated by artists such as John Leech or Frederick Page. Another characteristic Victorian publication is the satirical weekly magazine, exemplified by Punch (founded in 1841).

Pictures of the age

Not only are most Victorian novels good stories, they also give a picture of the age. The novels of Dickens, for example, condemn (among others) abusive boarding school teachers, Poor Law guardians and heartless industrialists. Collins criticises the marriage laws, evangelical busybodies and sexual hypocrisy. Jane Eyre is a perfect picture of the life of a Victorian governess.

Edward Bulwer Lytton (1803-73) sets his 'silver fork' novels in high society, Anthony Trollope paints a benign portrait of a cathedral town, Thomas Hardy articulates a tragic view of the Dorset countryside, and George Gissing looks at the harshness of urban poverty. Later, the American expatriate Henry James (1843-1916) explores how old English aristocrats relate to new American money, while Rudyard Kipling shows how the British experience life in India.

The new journalism

Novelists such as Dickens and Eliot also contribute to the new journalism, writing in periodicals such as the Fortnightly Review and the Westminster Review. They are joined by intellectuals such as John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold (who writes Culture and Anarchy in 1869), Walter Bagehot (who explains the enduring power of the monarchy in The English Constitution in the 1860s), biologist T H Huxley (1825-95, who defends Darwin) and novelist George Meredith.

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Children's fiction

As the 19th century progresses, levels of literacy steadily increase, and the Victorians invent the children's novel. Religious groups are among the earliest publishers for the young. The evangelical Religious Tract Society, founded in 1799, first publishes pious tales, then wholesome adventure stories, and in 1879 launches its weekly magazine, the Boy's Own Paper.

By the middle of the century, many publishers recognise the commercial potential of a strong children's list, and encourage writers and artists to create an astonishing variety of entertainment. Several publishers issue sixpenny coloured picture books, known as toy books, designed by such distinguished artists as Walter Crane (see below) and Randolph Caldecott (1846-86), and skilfully printed by Edmund Evans.

Fairies and fantasy

Fairy stories grow in popularity: the works of Frenchman Charles Perrault are endlessly retold; the German Grimm brothers' tales appear in English in 1823 and Danish Hans Christian Andersen's in 1846. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Oxford don Lewis Carroll (1832-98) dominates the list of fantasy books, but Thackeray (The Rose and the Ring) and Charles Kingsley (The Water Babies) precede him, while George Macdonald follows his lead. Edward Lear leads the craze for nonsense poems and limericks.

Publishing sensation

By the 1880s, there is a wide range of juvenile magazines, and fiction, in the form of action-packed tales of adventure and irreverent school stories, is part of many children's experience. Books such as With Clive in India by G A Henty (1832-1902) are particularly popular, and Anthony Hope's novel The Prisoner of Zenda is the publishing sensation of 1894. For the growing numbers of middle-class children sent to public schools, there are books such as Tom Brown's Schooldays by Rugby- and Oxford-educated Thomas Hughes, Eric; or Little by Little by Dean F W Farrar (1858) and John Halifax, Gentleman by Mrs Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1854), a tale of self-help.

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Poetry

King of the Victorian poets is Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92), who is made poet laureate in 1850. Typical of his haunting poetry of doubt and grief is In Memoriam (1850) and 'Maud' (1855). His 'Charge of the Light Brigade' captures an iconic moment of reckless military bravery, turning a Crimean War defeat into a victory in the popular imagination. Tennyson is a favourite of Queen Victoria.

As with novels, the sheer variety of poetry is impressive, from the subtle lyric verse of Christina Rossetti (1830-94) to the modernistic experiments with words of the Catholic priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), from the love poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) to the dramatic monologues of her prolific husband Robert Browning (1812-89), and from the nostalgic verses of A Shropshire Lad by A E Housman (1859-1936) to the luxuriant symbolism of Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). The artist William Morris also writes poetry.

As well as these, novelists such as Emily Brontë, Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling also write verse. The sentiments of Kipling's poem 'If' – 'If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs...' – seems to sum up the late Victorian age.

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Painting

The main characteristic of Victorian painting is realism. Queen Victoria's favourite painter is Edwin Landseer (1802-73), who is knighted in 1850 and made president of the Royal Academy in 1865. His animal paintings include The Stag at Bay and The Monarch of the Glen, and his sculpture includes the lions at the foot of Nelson's Column in London's Trafalgar Square.

Scenes from Shakespeare

Equally popular is Daniel Maclise (1806-70), who specialises in painting scenes from Shakespeare, such as Macbeth and the Weird Sisters (1836), and from history, such as Alfred the Great in the Tent of Guthruyn (1852). His Death of Nelson (1864) is hung in the Houses of Parliament.

Charles Eastlake (1793-1865), by contrast, prefers religious themes such as Christ Blessing Little Children (1839), while David Wilkie Wynfield (1837-87) paints historical subjects such as The Death of Buckingham, Charles I's favourite. Wynfield is also the leader of the St John's Wood Clique, a group of young men who like to be photographed by him while wearing historical costume.

J M W Turner

An important exception to these conservative painters is J M W Turner (1775-1851), a radical innovator whose use of colour will influence successive generations of artists. Shortly after Victoria comes to the throne, Turner paints his most daringly abstract paintings, including The Fighting Temeraire (1839) and Steamer in a Snowstorm (1842), both full of swirling masses of colour.

But Turner is at his boldest in Rain, Steam and Speed – the Great Western Railway (1844), embracing the locomotive age by portraying a train thundering in heavy rain towards the viewer along a bridge over the Thames. A hare is shown sprinting in front, representing the speed of the title. Amazed by the technique and the originality of subject, Thackeray says, 'The world has never seen anything like this picture.'

The pre-Raphaelites

The pre-Raphaelites – Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82), John Everett Millais (1829-96) and William Holman Hunt – and their followers enjoy considerable popularity from the early 1850s. Adopting the name in 1848, the 'year of revolutions', they set out to challenge the well-mannered painting of Landseer, Maclise and Eastlake. Arguing that the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael had introduced a meaningless beauty into art, they try to recapture the spirit of the more muscular and moral art that preceded him.

Instead of formal animal paintings, they paint more primitive works with social and religious messages. Instead of dark canvases their paintings have boldness of line, clarity of colour and worthy subjects. Examples include Rossetti's The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and Beata Beatrix (1863), Millais' Christ in the House of His Parents (1850) and Ophelia (1852), and Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat (1854). Working men and women queue for hours to file past Work by Ford Madox Brown (1821-93) when, after 13 years, it is finally finished in 1863. Other painters such as Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98) and William Morris explore more fantastical themes.

Fin de siècle

By then end of the century, Millais is painting sentimental portraits such as Bubbles (1886), while Lawrence Alma Tadema (1836-1912) and Albert Moore (1841-93) depict nudity in classical contexts. Other artists are part of this fin de siècle decadent scene.

Aesthetes such as Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98) draw highly artificial and erotic drawings, while Walter Crane (1845-1915) becomes popular as a book illustrator. Most influential of all is Morris, whose Arts & Crafts movement has more impact than the 'foreign' art nouveau. Advocating the hand-made and the unique as opposed to goods produced by mechanised factories, Morris looks to the Middle Ages and to rural traditions to promote the moral and aesthetic virtues of craft work.

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Architecture

When, at the start of Victoria's reign, the Houses of Parliament burn down, they are rebuilt in a fake Gothic style by Charles Barry (1795-1860) and decorated inside by Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-52). In general, Victorians love mock-Tudor and fake-Gothic styles. The Gothic revival is led by Pugin who sees this type of architecture as a Christian style that counters the 'barbarism' of the neo-classical Regency. One of his best buildings is Alton Towers (1836).

Baronial and Ruskinian

In Scotland, the similar baronial style is exemplified by Balmoral castle (1853-8), designed by William Smith, city architect of Aberdeen, who was strongly influenced by Prince Albert.

Other exponents of the new Gothic revival are: Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-78); William Butterfield (1814-1900), responsible for Keble College, Oxford; Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1913), who designed Bedford Park and New Scotland Yard, both London; and Alfred Waterhouse (1803-1905). They build churches and institutional buildings of all kinds from museums to colleges by applying Ruskinian principles of decorated style.

They create a huge amount of civic architecture: Scott's work includes the Albert Memorial (1863) and the bright orange brick Midland Hotel at St Pancras Station, London (1865-71); Waterhouse builds Manchester Town Hall (1869-77) and London's Natural History Museum (1873-81). For the Foreign Office (1862-73), Sir George Gilbert Scott uses a neo-Renaissance style drawn from study of Italian palazzi (he is very hurt when Lord Palmerston bans his planned Gothic buildings).

Exceptions

A wonderful exception to these 'neo' looks is Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace (1851), which uses iron and glass to create a functional building that is strikingly modern.

By the end of the century, the repetitive nature of neo-Gothic and neo-Renaissance styles are challenged by William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement and by imports of Continental art nouveau fashion, popularised especially by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) in Glasgow.

A new generation, headed by Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944), develops what is called the 'English style' of domestic architecture, seen at its best in the suburbs. He is best known for his design for the Roman Catholic cathedral of Liverpool (1929-44) and the Cenotaph in London's Whitehall (1919-20).

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Theatre

Victorian theatre is dominated by melodrama. It contains every ingredient of popular appeal: strong emotions (both pathetic and tragic), knockabout comedy, romantic feelings, sensational revelations and the highly moral reward of virtue and the punishment of vice. Often set in the past, or in a foreign country, melodrama features stock characters such as mustachioed villains, trembling maidens and robust heroes. Examples include Colin Hazelwood's Lady Audley's Secret (1863) and T A Palmer's East Lynne (1874).

Melodrama

At its best, as in the plays of Dion Boucicault from the 1850s to the 1870s, melodrama is quite respectable. The queen is a fan of Boucicault's The Corsican Brothers and his massive output includes The Colleen Bawn (1860) and The Shaughraun (1875). Other plays, such as Thomas Robertson's 'cup-and-saucer' comedy Caste (1867), H J Byron's Our Boys (1875), Brandon Thomas's Charley's Aunt (1892) and Tennyson's Becket (1893) are great crowd-pleasers.

This is also the era of star actors such as Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, Sarah Bernhardt, Mrs Patrick Campbell and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Irving (1838-1905), the first actor to be knighted, tours with his theatre company all around Britain using the new railways. Meanwhile spectacular plays, often put on by Augustus Harris at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, feature avalanches, earthquakes and snowstorms.

From Wilde to Shaw

Serious drama flowers in the 1890s, with the work of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929) and Arthur Pinero (1855-1934). In particular, Wilde's witty comedies (such as The Importance of Being Ernest, 1895), with their glittering language and ironic social comments, are jewels of British drama. His more serious play, Salome – a heightened drama about the relationship between John the Baptist and Salome – is refused a licence by the theatre censor, the Lord Chamberlain, in 1892, and is premièred in Paris four years later

This is also the era of the early plays of George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), especially Arms and the Man (1894), The Devil's Disciple (1897) and Mrs Warren's Profession (1898), a radical play about prostitution.

Music hall

From the 1850s, the music hall caters for more popular tastes. Staging a variety of acts – songs, music, dance and acrobatics – music hall encourages audience participation, and venues also sell food and drink. Charles Morton, the father of the genre, sets up the Canterbury in Lambeth, London, in 1851. The Alhambra in Bradford is a good example of a regional music hall. Singers such as Marie Lloyd and Dan Leno use innuendo in songs such as 'Oh, Mister Porter' or 'The Galloping Major' to challenge the banishment of sex from public life. As a result, music hall stars are not allowed into polite society.

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Music

The princes of Victorian music are Elgar and the duo Gilbert and Sullivan. Edward Elgar (1857-1934) is the leading figure in serious English music. His work is noted for its powerful and attractive elegiac tone and includes The Enigma Variations (1899) and the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius (1900). In 1903, his 'Pomp and Circumstance' tune is attached to the words of 'Land of Hope and Glory', thus defining a quintessentially British imperial sensibility.

In 1881, the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte builds the Savoy Theatre, and gives the careers of William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) a big boost. Their operettas, composed by Sullivan with words by Gilbert, are a burlesque mix of the delightfully absurd and the lovingly satirical – for although works such as Trial by Jury (1875), HMS Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879) and The Mikado (1885) laugh at the eccentricities of English life, the barbs are affectionate and harmless. Nor is religion neglected – Sullivan's output includes the hymn 'Onward Christian Soldiers' (1871).

Victorians do not just listen to music, they make it. Most respectable Victorian houses have a piano in the parlour and families play and sing together. Amateur music is very important: choral societies flourish across the nation and brass bands become popular in the 1880s and 1890s.

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Photography

The most modern of Victorian art forms is photography. Cameras and photographic equipment of the most up-to-date type are on show at the 1851 Great Exhibition, where J A Whipple, a Boston photographer, exhibits a daguerreotype of the moon. Photography is also used to record real events – the Crimean War photographs of Roger Fenton and James Robertson in the mid-1850s are eye-openers for the newspaper-reading public.

Photography eventually becomes an art form. Some of the earliest examples are the portraits of Julia Margaret Cameron (influenced by David Wilkie Wynfield, see above) of great Victorian men such as the poet Tennyson (dressed as 'The Dirty Monk'). Equally Victorian in their sensibility are Lewis Carroll's photographs of pre-pubescent girls, such as Alice Liddell, dressed as beggars. In 1861, James Clerk Maxwell produces the first colour photograph.

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