Interesting analysis of the contrasts in the Victorian. Our class on 19th-century intellectual history focused on tracing the development of the romantic-vs.-realist and liberal-vs.-conservative contrasts. In my own reading, I've probably focused most on the birth of Marxism, as well as more broadly the development of the conflict between Christianity and secular philosophy/science at that time.
And I've read all those Patrick O'Brian books, which are set in the early 19th.
Haven't read those--I should check that out. I also like 19th-century literature--esp. Poe, Stevenson, Stoker, and some of the other horror writers, as well as Verne and Wells' SF. There was some good fantasy written then, too--William Morris' Wood Beyond the World, E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, plus Alice in Wonderland if you count that.
As for medieval, I'm not sure, the primitive weaponry is fascinating of course. Just the pure distance of those times from ours makes them fascinating.
Same here. I'm interested in the weapons and armor as well as seige warfare. One thing I really liked about RotK was how well they depicted the seige of Minas Tirith.
We also started counting how many times he used the works "verdure" and "quadrupeds". Might have just been the translation we had, but those words came up ALL the time.