Note that this list is not meant to be exhaustive. You can use it as a starting point for a particular topic.

This list includes book-length studies only. If you would like to research essay-length studies, the best place to start is the MLA bibliography. University of Toronto users can access it here: MLA Bib.

This list does not include studies of individual texts or authors. One of the easiest way you can find these is by typing the author's name into a subject search on the library catalogue.

I will be periodically adding items to this bibliography.

Victorian history / social history

Altick, Richard D. Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature. New York: Norton, 1973.

Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. The Victorian Temper: A Study in Literary Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951.

Gilmour, Robin. The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1830-1890. London: Longman, 1993.

Houghton, Walter Edwards. The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.

Tucker, Herbert F. A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999.

Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780-1950. London: Chatto & Windus, 1958.

The Novel (general)

Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. London: E. Arnold, 1927.

The Victorian novel

Gilmour, Robin. The Novel in the Victorian Age: A Modern Introduction. London: E. Arnold, 1986.

Serial publication of Victorian novels

Hugues, Linda K. The Victorian Serial. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991.

Law, Graham. Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press. New York: Palgrave, 2000.

Wynne, Deborah. The Sensation Novel and the Victorian Family Magazine. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Women studies

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1979.

Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton University Press, 1977, 1982.

Fallen women / Prostitutes

Anderson, Amanda. Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rehetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Logan, Deborah Anna. Fallenness in Victorian Women's Writing: Marry, Stitch, Die, or Do Worse. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.

Matus, Jill L. Unstable Bodies: Victorian Representations of Sexuality and Maternity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.

Watt, George. The Fallen Woman in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel. London: Croom Helm, 1984.

Winnifrith, Tom. Fallen Women in the Nineteenth-Century Novel. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.

Men studies

Gilmour, Robin. The Idea of the Gentleman in the Victorian Novel. London: Allen & Unwin, 1981.

Queer studies

Dowling, Linda. Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Fairies

Silver, Carole G. Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

General fun

Beaver, Patrick. Victorian Parlor Games. Nashville: T. Nelson, 1978.

Sutherland, John. Can Jane Eyre Be Happy?: More Puzzles in Classic Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Sutherland, John. Is Heathcliff a Murderer?: Puzzles in 19th-Century Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Sutherland, John. Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet?: Further Puzzles in Classic Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Other bibliographies

There are plenty of bibliographies for the study of Victorian literature on web. A rather large one (though not really "comprehensive" as the compiler suggests) is on Susan R. Horton's website.