In the aftermath of the collapse of the Spanish, Portuguese, Roman, Chinese and Mughal empires, the 19th Century was typified by the growth in the influence of Britain and the United States on the world stage. Not least of all was their influence on entertainment.
Perhaps the biggest, and longest lasting influence is the massive impact of British writers on the literature world. The 19th Century was a hot bed for classics. Charles Dickens lived and worked throughout the middle period of the 19th Century on classic fiction like Oliver Twist (1937-1939), A Tale of Two Cities (1851) and Great Expectations (1861).
It wasn't just Dickens that was active during the century; Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes for the first time, the Bronte's brought us Jayne Eyre, Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights and Rudyard Kipling gave us Young Mowgli. There were also sinister twists in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (1818), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891) and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886).
In music, it was the European composers that let the way in the wake of the might of Beethoven and Back from the previous century. Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) and Claude Debussy (1862-1918) were prolific composers throughout the latter half of the century. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky produced Swan Lake (1876), The Nutcracker (1892) and the 1812 Overture (1880). Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) developed his operatic masterpieces La Traviata (1853) and Rigoletto (1851). Frediric Francois Chopin (1810-1849) and Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) were also big proponents in establishing the credentials of classical music in the 19th Century.
Perhaps the biggest, and longest lasting influence is the massive impact of British writers on the literature world. The 19th Century was a hot bed for classics. Charles Dickens lived and worked throughout the middle period of the 19th Century on classic fiction like Oliver Twist (1937-1939), A Tale of Two Cities (1851) and Great Expectations (1861).
It wasn't just Dickens that was active during the century; Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes for the first time, the Bronte's brought us Jayne Eyre, Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights and Rudyard Kipling gave us Young Mowgli. There were also sinister twists in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (1818), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891) and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886).
In music, it was the European composers that let the way in the wake of the might of Beethoven and Back from the previous century. Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) and Claude Debussy (1862-1918) were prolific composers throughout the latter half of the century. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky produced Swan Lake (1876), The Nutcracker (1892) and the 1812 Overture (1880). Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) developed his operatic masterpieces La Traviata (1853) and Rigoletto (1851). Frediric Francois Chopin (1810-1849) and Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) were also big proponents in establishing the credentials of classical music in the 19th Century.