Edwardian

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Edwardian, strictly, of the reign of Edward VII, but the term is commonly used (in contrast with ‘Victorian’) of the years 1900–14. H. G. Wells wrote that Queen Victoria sat on England like a great paper-weight, and that after her death things blew all over the place. This expresses well the excitement, the new sense of freedom, and the lack of direction, in Wells himself and in Arnold Bennett, Galsworthy, E. M. Forster, and other liberal writers of the period. It was an era of outstanding achievement in the theatre (with G. B. Shaw and Granville-Barker) and, especially, in the novel, notably in the great works of H. James's last phase and the radical experiments of Conrad (and his collaborator F. M. Ford). At the same time strongly traditional themes in the writing of the period—the Empire as a source of national pride, the countryside as the custodian of national values, the upper-class house-party representing the whole of English life—support the still current alternative sense of the word ‘Edwardian’, referring to a period of sunlit prosperity and opulent confidence preceding the cataclysm of the Great War.

Ed·ward·i·an / edˈwôrdēən; -ˈwär-/ • adj. of, relating to, or characteristic of the reign of King Edward VII: the Edwardian era a fine Edwardian house.

Edwardian of, relating to, or characteristic of the reign of King Edward VII (1841–1910), king from 1901.

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