{"product_id":"walter-besant-the-business-of-literature-and-the-pleasures-of-reform-9781802076974","title":"Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the 1880s and 1890s, Walter Besant was one of Britain’s most lionized living novelists. Like many popular writers of the period, Besant suffered from years of critical neglect. Yet his centrality to Victorian society and culture all but ensured a revival of interest. While literary critics are now rediscovering the more than forty works of fiction that he penned or co-wrote, as part of a more general revaluation of Victorian popular literature, legal scholars have argued that Besant, by advocating for copyright reform, played a crucial role in consolidating a notion of literary  property as the exclusive possession of the individuated intellect. For their part, historians have recently shown how Besant – as a prominent  philanthropist who campaigned for the cultural vitalization of impoverished areas in east and south London – galvanized late Victorian social reform activities. The expanding corpus of work on Besant, however, has largely kept the domains of authorship and activism, which he perceived as interrelated, conceptually distinct. Analysing the mutually constitutive interplay in Besant’s career between philanthropy and the professionalization of authorship, \u003ci\u003eWalter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform\u003c\/i\u003e highlights their fundamental  interconnectedness in this Victorian intellectual polymath’s life and work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e'This dedication to the complex network of ideas and lived practice makes Walter Besant more than a mere love letter to a forgotten Victorian. Rather, it provides an integral contribution to the history of publishing and of literary production, and to studies of libralism and reform as they appeared at the end of the century.'\u003cbr\u003e Peter Katz, \u003cem\u003eVictorians Institute Journal\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘Kevin A. Morrison’s recent volume of essays, \u003cem\u003eWalter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform\u003c\/em\u003e, offers a timely and important meditation on the restoration of authors who have fallen out of favor or slipped into obscurity… The essays in this volume offer nuanced reflections on Besant’s marginal status, thoughtful speculations about his fall from popularity, and compelling arguments for bringing him back into the Victorian studies.’ Heidi Kaufman, \u003cem\u003eVictorian Studies\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eIntroduction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e1. Walter Besant Now\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eKevin A. Morrison\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart One: Literary Collaborations\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e2. Besant and Collaboration\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eKirsty Bunting\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e3. ‘Another like me’: The Literary Partnership of Walter Besant and James Rice\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eRichard Storer\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e4.\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e‘I have altered nothing’: Walter Besant’s Completion of \u003ci\u003eBlind Love\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eMaria K. Bachman and Don Richard Cox\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart Two: Reforming Authorship\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e5. Walter Besant and Copyright Reform\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eMary Ann Gillies\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e6. The Author Function in Walter Besant’s Fiction: the Notion of Artistic Value in the Wake of Copyright Law and the Nationalist Restructuring of the Trade\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eAlberto Gabriele \u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e7.\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eBesant, Chatto and Watt: a Literary Income in the 1890s\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eSimon Eliot\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e8. Workers as Artists: From Copyright to the Palace of Delight in Besant’s Writings\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eAyşe Çelikkol\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart Three: Authoring Reforms\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e9. Altruism and \u003ci\u003eThe Monks of Thelema\u003c\/i\u003e: Ideals and Realities\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eGeoffrey A.C. Ginn\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e10. The Ethics of Perception and the Politics of Recognition: Walter Besant’s \u003ci\u003eAll Sorts and Conditions of Men\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eKevin Swafford\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e11. From Happy Individuals to Universal Sisterhood: Affective Reforms in \u003ci\u003eAll Sorts and Conditions of Men \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Children of Gibeon\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eVicky Cheng and Haejoo Kim\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart Four: Literary Relations\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e12. Moral Perfectionism, Optatives, and the Inky Line in Besant’s \u003ci\u003eAll in a Garden Fair\u003c\/i\u003e and Gissing’s \u003ci\u003eNew Grub Street\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eTom Ue\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e13. Walter Besant: A Latter-Day Dickens?\u003c\/p\u003e  Andrzej Diniejko","brand":"Liverpool University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50470079758679,"sku":"9781802076974","price":29.69,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781802076974.jpg?v=1744897343","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/walter-besant-the-business-of-literature-and-the-pleasures-of-reform-9781802076974","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}