This volume provides a critical examination of the lives and works of the leading novelists, poets, dramatists, artists, philosophers, social thinkers, mathematicians and scientists of the period. The subjects are assessed in the light of their cultural importance, and each entry is deliberately interpretative, making this work both an essential reference tool and an engaging collection of essays. Figures covered include: Marx, Wagner,Darwin, Malthus, Balzac, Jane Austen, Nietzsche, Babbage, Edgar Allan Poe, Ruskin, Schleiermacher, Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau and Oscar Wilde.