Victorian literature was written in England during the "Victorian era" which was from 1832-1901. Victorian literature mostly focused on the strict social, political, and sexual conservatism of the time. Some famous Victorian authors are Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, Charles Dickens, and William Thackeray.
Modern age literature (modernism) was during the 1890's through the 1940's. The literature focused on moving towards modern Western ideas, religion, social conventions, and morality. Some famous modern age authors are William Faulkner, Scott Fizgerald, and Joseph Conrad.
So I suppose the main difference is that Victorian literature focused on the culture in which they were already in while Modern age focused on the ideas of the West and the future.
The Novel
The Victorian era was the great age of the English novel—realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long. It was the ideal form to describe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class. The novels of Charles Dickens, full to overflowing with drama, humor, and an endless variety of vivid characters and plot complications, nonetheless spare nothing in their portrayal of what urban life was like for all classes. William Makepeace Thackeray is best known for Vanity Fair (1848), which wickedly satirizes hypocrisy and greed.
Emily Brontë's (see Brontë, family) single novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), is a unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense. The fine novels of Emily's sister Charlotte Brontë, especially Jane Eyre (1847) and Villette (1853), are more rooted in convention, but daring in their own ways. The novels of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) appeared during the 1860s and 70s. A woman of great erudition and moral fervor, Eliot was concerned with ethical conflicts and social...