Description
Book SynopsisPresents fresh approaches to classic Victorian fiction from 1830-1900. This title opens up for the reader the cultural world in which the Victorian novel was written and read. It provides perspectives on how Victorian fiction relates to different contexts, such as class, sexuality, empire, psychology, law, and biology.
Trade Review"[T]his book succeeds in presenting a representative selection of historicist critical thinking on panorama of themes of the novel during the period of what was, arguably, this literary form's greatest achievement. It will be a stimulating introduction for the advanced undergraduate with an interest in the nineteenth century, and a useful lead for the postgraduate student working in the field of Victorian studies on any one of the numerous taught programmes currently on offer."
Reference ReviewsTable of ContentsNotes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
List of illustrations xiii
Chronology xiv
Introduction 1
Francis O’Gorman
1 ‘The sun and moon were made to give them light’: Empire in the Victorian Novel 4
Cannon Schmitt
2 ‘Seeing is believing?’: Visuality and Victorian Fiction 25
Kate Flint
3 ‘The boundaries of social intercourse’: Class in the Victorian Novel 47
James Eli Adams
4 Legal subjects, legal objects: The Law and Victorian Fiction 71
Clare Pettitt
5 ‘The withering of the individual’: Psychology in the Victorian Novel 91
Nicholas Dames
6 ‘Telling of my weekly doings’: The Material Culture of the Victorian Novel 113
Mark W. Turner
7 ‘Farewell poetry and aerial flights’: The Function of the Author and Victorian Fiction 134
Richard Salmon
8 Everywhere and nowhere: Sexuality in the Victorian Novel 156
Carolyn Dever
9 ‘One of the larger lost continents’: Religion in the Victorian Novel 180
Michael Wheeler
10 ‘The difference between human beings’: Biology in the Victorian Novel 202
Angelique Richardson
11 ‘One great confederation?’: Europe in the Victorian Novel 232
John Rignall
12 ‘A long deep sob of that mysterious wondrous happiness that is one with pain’: Emotion in the Victorian Novel 253
Francis O’Gorman
Index 271
