Description
Book SynopsisNovel Craft explores an intriguing and under-studied aspect of cultural life in Victorian England: domestic handicrafts, the decorative pursuit that predated the Arts and Crafts movement. Talia Schaffer argues that the handicraft movement served as a way to critique the modern mass-produced commodity and the rapidly emerging industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century. Her argument is illustrated with the four pivotal novels that form her study''s core-Gaskell''s Cranford, Yonge''s The Daisy Chain, Dickens''s Our Mutual Friend, and Oliphant''s Phoebe Junior. Each features various handicrafts that subtly aim to subvert the socioeconomic changes being wrought by industrialization. Schaffer goes beyond straightforward textual analysis by shaping each chapter around the individual craft at the center of each novel (paper for Cranford, flowers and related arts in The Daisy Chain, rubbish and salvage in Our Mutual Friend, and the contrasting ethos of arts and crafts connoisseurship in Ph
Trade ReviewSchaffer has revolutionized the study of Victorian aesthetics. * Choice *
Table of ContentsTable of Contents ; Introduction: "How to Read Wax Coral, and Why" ; Chapter 1. "Women's Work: The History of the Victorian Domestic Handicraft" ; Chapter 2. "Ephemerality: The Cranford Papers" ; Chapter 3. "Preservation: The Daisy and the Chain" ; Chapter 4. "Salvage: Betty as the Mutual Friend" ; Chapter 5: "Connoisseurship: Giving Credit to Phoebe Junior" ; Postscript ; Bibliography
