Beginning in the 1830s and ending with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, the Victorian Era saw the British Empire—the largest the world had seen—dominate the world. British ingenuity in the fields of technological development and the heavy industry of its Industrial Revolution led to Britain being dubbed "the workshop of the world" while its Royal Navy policed the world's oceans helping to create what has become known as a "Pax Britannica." This book details the sweeping social and economic changes that took place during this period but also examines the events of the time and the lives of the eminent Victorians who contributed so much to British success—men and women such as Florence Nightingale, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Charles Darwin. This is the story of the greatest period in British history, a period that still resonates in today's Britain.