Historical Context Of The Prisoner Of Zenda

Historical Context of ¨The Prisoner of Zenda¨

* The Book was published in 1894.
* This decade was full of scientific and technological advances. This was the era of the IndustrialRevolution.
* The car, the airplane, the X-rays, radioactivity, the electricity, engines, factories and more were discovered and invented between these 10 years.
* Incredibly the economy in the 1890´swas no so good, The United States were facing an economic depression (called the Panic)that last until 1896 and extended to Ireland ,Britain and then to all Europe.
* Poverty increased a lot inboth America and Europe. But the Panic helped two industries that were considered ¨not important¨ before the depression: Latin America and Asia. These two continents took advantage of the chaos that wasin the ¨lead countries, and started to produce their own products (with better quality) that were sold to the U.S.A and Europe that were in need of their products.
* This chaos in Europe had aparticular consequence: The monarchies became weak. Most of the royal families such as Russian and Greek had less and less power in their countries.
* The statement above is much related to thestory, because the book is about a king- to- be, that was kidnapped the day of its crowning (and became prisoner of Zenda). This reflects the danger and the low respect that royalty had those days.
*When the book was published a lot of people noticed the similarity of the story, with Mark Twain´s The Prince and the Pauper (in both stories the prince was gone and a plebeian that is very similar tothe prince takes his place).This particularity made clear the desire of the people to go back to the days were the monarchy was strong, were everything seemed fine.
* The impact of all these newtechnologies in arts was huge, as an effect of it ¨crazy ideas ¨were plot of the most important books. For examples Dracula appeared in 1897.The author H.G Wells published ¨The Time Machine¨, The...