Realism

Realists saw the Romantic Era as a series of whimsical emotional fantasies. Their solution? Revert back to what really made past literature great: objectivity. The Realism Era (1850-1900) ushered in fifty years of detachment, accurate observation, and restrained criticism. While this may seem ​dull, the Realism era was anything but that. It's attention to detail is what has shaped the modern-day novel into what it is today.

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Realism literature took pride in portraying everyday experiences as they were in real life. It saw the rise of third-person narration as a storytelling method. These works also focused on underlying moral judgments in the lives of lower-class and middle-class individuals. Throughout the period, realistic stories talked to people all across the world. War and Peace author Leo Tolstoy (author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina), Charles Dickens (Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol), and Henrik Ibsen (A Doll's House and Hedda Gabbler) dominated the era with stories from rags to riches, riches to rags, and everything in between.