Victorian Authors The Age Of The Classics The English novel came of age in the Victorian period. There had been a decline in novel writing at the beginning of the century, partly because fiction had turned to horror and crude emotionalism and partly because of religious and moral objections to the reading of novels.   Even Sir Walter Scott, at first, considered the craft of the novelist degrading and kept his authorship a secret. In the Victorian period, however, these attitudes toward the novel were to change.   With the rise of the popular magazine, authors began to experiment with serialized fiction. Soon they were writing novels. Such was the beginning of Dickens' `Sketches by Boz' (1836) and of Thackeray's `The Yellowplush Correspondence' (1837-38).   Charles Dickens (1812-70) became a master of local color, as in `The Pickwick Papers' (1836-37). Few of his novels have convincing plots, but in characterization and in the creation of moods he was outstanding. By 1850 Dickens had become England's best-loved novelist.   The talents of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63) produced a different type of novel. He was not a reformer, as Dickens was, and he was not moved to tearful sentiments by the world's unfortunates. Instead, he attempted to see the whole of life, detached and critically. He disliked sham, hypocrisy, stupidity, false optimism, and self-seeking. The result was satire on manners. Literature would be the poorer without `Vanity Fair' (1847-48) and its heroine, Becky Sharp.   The novels of the Bronte sisters (Charlotte, 1816-55; Emily, 1818-48; Anne, 1820-49) have very little to do with the condition of society or the world in general. Charlotte's `Jane Eyre' and Emily's `Wuthering Heights' (both 1847), especially, are powerful and intensely personal stories of the private lives of characters isolated from the rest of the world.   Later English novelists turned to the logical plot and the concept of a central theme. Anthony Trollope (1815-82) dealt with middle- and upper-class people interestingly, naturally, and wittily (`Orley Farm', 1862). George Eliot (1819-80) was one of England's greatest women novelists. In `Silas Marner' (1861) and `Middlemarch' (1871-72) she used the novel to interpret life.   Wilkie Collins (1824-89) was one of the earliest writers to build a novel wholly around an ingenious plot--the formula that is used in the modern mystery story. `The Moonstone' (1868) is his best.