<P> The reclaiming of the past was a major part of Victorian literature with an interest in both classical literature but also the medieval literature of England . The Victorians loved the heroic, chivalrous stories of knights of old and they hoped to regain some of that noble, courtly behaviour and impress it upon the people both at home and in the wider empire . The best example of this is Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King, which blended the stories of King Arthur, particularly those by Thomas Malory, with contemporary concerns and ideas . The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood also drew on myth and folklore for their art, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti contemporaneously regarded as the chief poet amongst them, although his sister Christina is now held by scholars to be a stronger poet . </P> <P> In drama, farces, musical burlesques, extravaganzas and comic operas competed with Shakespeare productions and serious drama by the likes of James Planché and Thomas William Robertson . In 1855, the German Reed Entertainments began a process of elevating the level of (formerly risqué) musical theatre in Britain that culminated in the famous series of comic operas by Gilbert and Sullivan and were followed by the 1890s with the first Edwardian musical comedies . The first play to achieve 500 consecutive performances was the London comedy Our Boys by H.J. Byron, opening in 1875 . Its astonishing new record of 1,362 performances was bested in 1892 by Charley's Aunt by Brandon Thomas . After W.S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde became the leading poet and dramatist of the late Victorian period . Wilde's plays, in particular, stand apart from the many now forgotten plays of Victorian times and have a closer relationship to those of the Edwardian dramatists such as George Bernard Shaw, whose career began in the 1890s . Wilde's 1895 comic masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, was the greatest of the plays in which he held an ironic mirror to the aristocracy while displaying virtuosic mastery of wit and paradoxical wisdom . It has remained extremely popular . </P> <P> The Victorians are credited with' inventing childhood', partly via their efforts to stop child labour and the introduction of compulsory education . As children began to be able to read, literature for young people became a growth industry, with not only established writers producing works for children (such as Dickens' A Child's History of England) but also a new group of dedicated children's authors . Writers like Lewis Carroll, R.M. Ballantyne and Anna Sewell wrote mainly for children, although they had an adult following . Other authors such as Anthony Hope and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote mainly for adults, but their adventure novels are now generally classified as for children . Other genres include nonsense verse, poetry which required a childlike interest (e.g. Lewis Carroll). School stories flourished: Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays and Kipling's Stalky & Co. are classics . </P> <P> Rarely were these publications designed to capture a child's pleasure; however, with the increase in use of illustrations, children began to enjoy literature, and were able to learn morals in a more entertaining way . With the newfound acceptance of reading for pleasure, fairy tales and folk tales became popular . Compiling folk tales by many authors with different topics made it possible for children to read literature by and about lots of different things that interested them . There were different types of books and magazines written for boys and girls . Girls' stories tended to be domestic and to focus on family life, whereas boys' stories were more about adventures . </P>

What was literature like in the victorian era