Genre

Victorian Science Fiction & Scientific Romance (Free Classics)

Before 'science fiction' had a name, readers called it scientific romance: Jules Verne's voyages, H. G. Wells's time machines and Martian invasions, Mary Shelley's Last Man. These are steampunk's direct ancestors — and they're in the public domain.

This list collects 3,600 books tagged Victorian Science Fiction by 1,030 authors, published between 1655 and 2024. 3,344 are free to read and 783 have a free audiobook. Books are ranked by how many readers have shelved, rated or downloaded them.

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Common tropes in Victorian Science Fiction

From Wikipedia

Scientific romance is an archaic, mainly British term for the genre of fiction now commonly known as science fiction. The term originated in the 1850s to describe both fiction and elements of scientific writing, but it has since come to refer to the science fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, primarily that of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle. In recent years the term has come to be applied to science fiction written in a deliberately anachronistic style as a homage to or pastiche of the original scientific romances.

Text from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

3,600 Victorian Science Fiction books · page 1 of 75

Top Victorian Science Fiction authors

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Frequently asked questions

What is scientific romance?

A late 19th- and early 20th-century British term for what we now call science fiction, especially the work of H. G. Wells.

What are the most popular Victorian Science Fiction books?

By reader shelving on Open Library and downloads, the most popular include The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), Dracula (1897), Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1899) and Robinson Crusoe (1686).