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Tropes first documented after the invention of the steam engine (1698) and before the invention of the radio (1890).
This is the classic age of English literature, and of the penny dreadful: Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, but also Frankenstein, Varney the Vampire, the first Sherlock Holmes novel, and the earliest Science Fiction. It is also the last time when books dominated popular entertainment, although many of these "books" were originally serialised in magazines, such as The Strand, Blackwood's etc.
This is also when many compilations of legends and fairy tales were collected and recorded, such as 19th-century Finnish work The Kalevala, the Child Ballads, The Brothers Grimm books, and most European Fairy Tale collections.
Tropes:
- Acid Reflux Nightmare: A Christmas Carol, 1843
- Adventurer Archaeologist: 19th-century gothic horror
- Affably Evil: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, 1859
- All Love Is Unrequited: Gilbert and Sullivan
- Alone with the Psycho: Great Expectations, Charles Dickens, 1860-1861
- And There Was Much Rejoicing: A Christmas Carol, 1843
- Beautiful All Along: "The Ugly Duckling" (1843) and "The Rough Faced Girl" (at least 1884).
- Become a Real Boy: The Adventures of Pinocchio, early 1880s
- Black Best Friend: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1876
- Blind and the Beast: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Boxing Kangaroo: An actual practice of the 1800s.
- Brain Fever: Happens to the doctor in Frankenstein. Accidentally invoked in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
- Brand Name Takeover: Kerosene, 1854
- Briar Patching: West African Anansi stories, known in North America as Uncle Remus.
- Car Meets House: The first car accident in history was one of these. In 1771 a prototype steam-powered car crashed through the wall of a French military building. The accident wrecked its inventor's reputation.
- Cat Scare: God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop by Robert Southey, 1799
- Chained to a Railway: "Captain Tom's Fright," 1867
- Colonel Badass: Col. Sherburn in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1884.
- Color Me Black: The Inky Boys from Der Struwwelpeter, 1845.
- Delivery Stork: Victorian English folklore
- Depth Deception: "The Sphinx," short story by Edgar Allan Poe, 1850
- Domed Hometown: Three Hundred Years Hence by William Delisle Hay, 1881
- Doom It Yourself: Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome, 1889
- Down To The Last Play: "Casey at the Bat," Ernest Thayer, 1888
- Dramatic Spotlight: Started with the use of 'limelight' (created by directing an oxy-hydrogen flame at calcium oxide) at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1837.
- Evil Hand: Fairy tale about three surgeons recorded by The Brothers Grimm.
- Evil Laugh: Faust, Charles Gounod, 1859
- Explosive Overclocking: The steam engine, bringing this to the brink of Older Than Steam without actually crossing the line.
- Fairytale Wedding Dress: Queen Vicky wore a white dress in 1840 — before, a wedding dress was otherwise indistinguishable from a regular Pimped-Out Dress.
- Fish Out of Temporal Water: A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthurs Court, Mark Twain, 1889
- Four Temperament Ensemble: The Three Musketeers, 1844
- Frankenstein's Monster: The Trope Namer
- Freaky Friday Flip: F. Anstey's Vice Versa: A Lesson to Fathers 1882
- Freaky Is Cool: Frankenstein
- Giving Radio To The Romans: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain 1889
- Going Down with the Ship: The trope is derived from Age of Sail maritime salvage laws, which said that if a ship was abandoned by all crew but didn't sink, it was first come, first serve on the ship and its cargo.
- Great White Hunter: Ned Land in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) and Allan Quatermain in King Solomon's Mines (1885).
- The Grotesque: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1831
- Has Two Mommies: The Guangxu Emperor of China (1871-1908) was raised by two mothers, Ci'an and Cixi, both widows of a previous emperor.
- Haunted Castle: The Castle of Otranto, 1764
- Heart Trauma: "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Andersen, 1845
- Hikikomori: Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov, 1859
- Historical In-Joke: The Three Musketeers, 1844; possibly its source material in 1700.
- I Do Not Own: Lord Byron's Don Juan, 1824
- Ill Girl: Jane Fairfax in Literature/Emma, 1815
- I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, 1869
- I'm Going to Hell for This: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) is the Trope Namer.
- Inspector Javert: Les Misérables, 1862 is the Trope Namer.
- Interrupted Suicide: Twice in Die Zauberflöte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1791
- Leitmotif: Term coined by a critic describing Carl Maria von Weber's classical compositions, 1871, but Weber died in 1826.
- Lemony Narrator: Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (1759-1767) and Jacques The Fatalist by Denis Diderot (1765-1780).
- Lesbian Vampire: Carmilla, 1872
- Literary Allusion Title: Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (1874) and "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning (1855).
- Living Toys: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E. T. A. Hoffmann, 1816.
- Lyrical Dissonance: The song "My Grandfather's Clock," written in 1876.
- Mad Scientist: 19th-century theatre adaptations of Frankenstein
- Man-Eating Plant: Early examples include a giant flytrap in Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "The American's Tale" (1879) and the "man-eating tree of Madagascar," a newspaper hoax born in 1881.
- Matzo Fever: Rebecca in Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, 1819
- Message in a Bottle: Chunosuke Matsuyama wrote one in 1784 after a shipwreck in the Pacific.
- Miraculous Malfunction: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886
- Mistaken for Special Guest: The Inspector General by Nikolai Gogol, 1836.
- Must Have Caffeine: Bach's Coffee Cantata
 1732-1734, a miniature opera dedicated to caffeine addiction.
- No Ontological Inertia: The stepmother's poisons have none in The Brothers Grimm fairy tale "Snowdrop" (a.k.a. Snow White).
- Not The Nessie: Early attacks by the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) were blamed on a giant narwhal.
- Not Wearing Pants Dream: The Dream of Councillor Popov, Alexey Tolstoy, 1873
- The Noun and the Noun: Many of Jane Austen's novels.
- Now It's My Turn: Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews, 1742
- Occult Detective: Dr. Martin Hesselius from Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's In A Glass Darkly, 1872.
- Oh Wait This Is My Grocery List: Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, 1817. Catherine, having read way too many Gothic novels, mistakes a laundry list it's too dark to read for something lurid such as a suicide note.
- The Old Convict: The Count of Monte-Cristo, 1844
- Open Sesame: Literal words in "Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves", added to The Arabian Nights in the 18th century.
- Pensieve Flashback: A Christmas Carol, 1843
- Pirate Parrot: Treasure Island, 1881
- The Pratfall: Shows up in vaudeville and music hall theater.
- Princess Classic: Supposedly Victorian, and already deconstructed by Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthurs Court (1889).
- Rambling Old Man Monologue: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798
- Rear Window Investigation: Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Mark Twain said similar words when he was mistakenly declared dead in the 1880s. He also wrote such a situation into The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
- Right On The Tick: A Christmas Carol, 1843
- River Of Insanity: "Doctor Livingston, I presume?"
- Robotic Reveal: "The Sandman" by E.T.A. Hoffmann, 1816
- Salvage Pirates: Robinson Crusoe, 1719
- Save the Villain: The Woman in White Wilkie Collins, 1859
- Science Is Useless: The legend of John Henry from the mid-19th century: man with sledgehammers digs a tunnel faster than a steam-powered drilling rig.
- Scrapbook Story: Common Victorian form.
- So Much For Stealth: The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper, early 1800s, possibly much older.
- Split Personality: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886
- Stock Yuck (Inedible Christmas Fruitcakes): "Miss Fogarty's Christmas Cake," 1883
- Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: "The Ghost of Oyuki," c. 1750
- Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Frankenstein, 1816
- Sympathetic Murderer: The monster in Frankenstein when killing his creator.
- Textbook Humor: Johnson's Dictionary (1755) has entries such as "Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words."
- Tomato in the Mirror: "William Wilson" by Edgar Allan Poe, 1839
- Tomboyish Name: Josephine "Jo" March of Little Women, 1868, by Louisa May Alcott
- Town with a Dark Secret: Germelshausen, 1800s, by Friedrich Gerstacker, source for Brigadoon.
- Trapped in the Past: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889
- True Love's Kiss: The Brothers Grimm version of "The True Bride" — but not the original versions of "Snow White," "Sleeping Beauty," or "Frog Prince."
- Übermensch: Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866
- Unconventional Formatting: Tristram Shandy, 1767
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: The opera Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II, 1871
- Wacky Cravings: This happens in the European fairy tales "Rapunzel" and "Petrosinella," both first recorded during the early 19th century.
- Walk the Plank: Francis Grose's Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue, 1788
- The Walls Are Closing In: "The Pit And The Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe, 1842
- The Watson: Watson's portrayal as this goes back to A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887
- With This Herring: "The Brave Little Tailor," a European folktale collected by The Brothers Grimm.
- Working on the Chain Gang: Les Misérables, 1862
- Wrong Guy First: Jane Austen's writing, or earlier.
- Your Costume Needs Work: "Masque Of The Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe, 1842
- Zillion Dollar Bill: The Sampo in the Kalevala.
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