In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the Georgian era and preceded the Edwardian era, and its later half overlaps with the first part of the Belle Époque era of continental Europe.
Painting of Queen Victoria by Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1859)
Information circulated by the campaign of Lewis Pugh Pugh, a candidate at the 1880 general election in Cardiganshire (now known as Ceredigion), explaining to supporters how to vote.
Depiction of the defence of Rorke's Drift during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 by Alphonse de Neuville (1880)
Recreation of a Victorian parlour at Nidderdale Museum, Yorkshire
History of the United Kingdom
The history of the United Kingdom began in the early eighteenth century with the Treaty of Union and Acts of Union. The core of the United Kingdom as a unified state came into being in 1707 with the political union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, into a new unitary state called Great Britain. Of this new state of Great Britain, the historian Simon Schama said:What began as a hostile merger would end in a full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world... it was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history.
A published version of the Articles of Union agreement that led to the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707
George I in 1714, by Godfrey Kneller
18th-century London by William Hogarth
John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough accepts the French surrender at Blenheim, 1704
