Following the Georgian Period, the Victorian Era was one that moved away from rationalism and towards romanticism and mysticism. Morality became an issue of utmost importance as social progress advanced. Of course, the times don’t change on their own, but are influenced by the people who live in them. Here’s a look at ten people who made the Victorian era what it was and helped changed Britain forever.

Queen Victoria

As with the Georgian Period, the Victorian Period derives its name from the reigning monarch of the time. With no legitimate heirs remaining to King William IV, Victoria ascended to the throne at age eighteen. At 63 years and seven months, she is still the longest serving monarch in British history. Her reign saw massive social, scientific, and technological changes to the United Kingdom and the world.

Charles Dickens

Perhaps the most influential novelist of the period, Charles Dickens used his stories to expand on the capabilities of literature and its use as social commentary. Notably, Dickens often portrayed the conditions of the impoverished and working classes in his novels, often displaying how society was set up to put them at a disadvantage. After growing up in a debtors’ prison with his family, Dickens portrayed the conditions in The Pickwick Papers, a novel influential in shutting down Fleet Prison.

Benjamin Disraeli

Former Prime Minister, Disraeli helped craft the modern Conservative Party and was the first and only Jewish leader of the House of Commons. His leadership saw Britain become a major imperial power across the globe, though unpopular wars later in his career led to the Conservatives’ defeat at the hands of the Liberal Party. Additionally, he was also a novelist with unsurprisingly political themes to his works.

Robert Peel

Another Conservative politician, Sir Robert Peel’s greatest contribution to the Victorian Period is the creation of the modern police force, now known as the Metropolitan Police Service. Police derive their nickname, “Bobbies” from him, and he is also the reason why most patrol officers do not carry weapons, as Peel wanted to foster a feeling that the police were civilians and not military. A long-serving politician, Peel was MP for Tamworth, first elected in 1830 and serving until his death in 1850.

Charles Darwin

A scientist who needs little introduction, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as laid out in On the Origin of the Species still proves controversial today. His work outlined the theory of natural selection that living organisms adapted to survive in their environments and those that could not became extinct. Taken onto the HMS Beagle as a naturalist mostly to study geology, but as the voyage went on, his observations in the Galapagos Islands piqued his scientific curiosity as he studied the life forms developing on the geographically young islands. These observations led to his evolutionary theories that perhaps had the biggest scientific impact of the era.

Isabella Beeton

If women were the generals of their households, as Isabella Beeton championed, then she was their Commander-in-Chief. “Mrs. Beeton” as she is known, was the author of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management and was one of the first cookbook authors. Her book on household management was the guide to running a Victorian house, with an emphasis on thrift and economy that helped make the book popular. Despite dying at the age of twenty-eight, her work had a major influence on the domestics of the Victorian and later eras.

Henry Fox Talbot

Henry Fox Talbot was an inventor who developed the calotype process that preceded the photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th Centuries. In the calotype process, a piece of paper is coated with silver iodide. This made the paper sensitive to light on which the photographic negative could be made, then multiple positives made from the negative. As a photographer, he was influential on the medium as an art form and took some of the first photographs of Oxford, Paris, Reading, and York.

William McGregor

At a time when sports popularity was on the rise, William McGregor helped found the Football League, the first organised football association in the world. Three years after the football club Aston Villa was formed in 1874, McGregor was asked to become a committee member of the club, eventually becoming a member of Aston Villa’s board of directors. The founding of the Football League helped transition the sport from a clubs of amateurs into a professional organisation.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It’s hard to think of a more well-known fictional detective than Sherlock Holmes (sorry, Batman is no. 2). His creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, started off his career as a medical doctor. While at medical school, Doyle was introduced to the abductive reasoning used by Dr. Joseph Bell to diagnose patients. Dabbling into writing fiction, Doyle created Holmes as a “consulting detective” that used Bell’s methods to solve crimes. Though Edgar Alan Poe is credited as creating the first detective story, Doyle transformed it into a genre and his creation is still popular today, as evidenced by programmes such as Elementary and Sherlock.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Brunel essentially built most of Victorian England’s transportation, including train tracks, bridges, and tunnels. One of the first projects he worked on was the Thames Tunnel as an assistant to his father, inventing a tunneling shield to protect the workers. Another big project for him was designing the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. Additionally, he also designed the Hungerford Bridge, the Royal Albert Bridge, and the Maidenhead Railway Bridge. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the Great Western Railway from London to Bristol (and later Exeter). He also formed the Great Western Steamship company with other investors that traveled from London to New York and designed a couple of the world’s biggest ships, the SS Great Western and the SS Great Britain. By changing the world through making it a little smaller, Brunel rounds out this list of ten Victorians every Anglophile should know.

Inevitably, list articles like this become about who we left off the list – so who would you include on a list of important Victorians?