The Early Victorian period, and especially the “hungry forties” [E 1] [F 1], was a time of great hardship and social protest, but also of great development and changes. The train can be taken as a symbol of these changes: the passage from the horse-drawn carriage to the steam-driven engine marked the end of one age and the beginning of another.

The railway age began in 1830, when the Manchester-Liverpool line was opened, and developed very rapidly in the forties. The train made communication quicker, lowered trasport costs, and stimulated investments.

The great industrial effort of the early period culminated in the Great Exhibition [E 1], which showed industrial products of English and foreign make. The Crystal Palace, where the exhibition was held, was a great feat of building engineering and confirmed Great Britain as “the workshop of the world”.

Mid-century culture was marked by optimism and faith in scientific progress as a means to improve people’s living conditions. The philosopher Herbert Spencer [F 1] represented this aspect: his trust in scientific progress went hand in hand with his faith in Charles Darwin’s [E 1] [F 1] [S 1] theory of evolution and natural selection, which included man in a general law of progress and therefore produced an optimistic view of life. Darwin highlighted his theories in his book On the origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

The late Victorian period was characterized by changes, such as the spread of education, which was made compulsory at primary level in 1870. This reform reduced the cultural gap between the lower and middle classes, and favoured an increase in the circulation of newspapers and magazines.