This book argues that, due to political and ideological shifts in the last decades of the nineteenth century - a time when the class system in England was in a state of flux - a new depiction of social class was possible in the English novel. Late-century writers such as Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells question the middle-class Victorian views of class that had dominated the novel for decades. By disrupting traditional novelistic conventions, these writers reveal the ideology of the historical moment in which those conventions obtained, thereby questioning the 'naturalness' of class assumed by earlier, middle-class Victorian writers. The book contextualizes novels by these writers within their historical moment with reference to relevant maps, journalism, artwork or photography, and specific historical events. It illuminates the relationship between fiction and history in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fiction, and especially the relationship between changing depictions of class and the development of realism. Examining the nineteenth-century English novel through the lens of social class allows the twenty-first century critic and student not only to understand the issues at stake in much Victorian fiction, but also to recognize powerful present-day vestiges of this social class system.

Product Description: Reading Public Romanticism is a significant new example of the linking of esthetics and historical criticism. Here Paul Magnuson locates Romantic poetry within a public discourse that combines politics and esthetics, nationalism and domesticity, sexuality and morality, law and legitimacy...read more

Product Description: First published in 2004. This study begins by surveying the field of modern hermeneutics. Noting its repeated crisis of self-legitimisation, it traces these to circular beliefs bequeathed by Romanticism that human nature is self-begetting, and can thus be known intimately and autonomously...read more

Product Description: Though well-known as the author of Trilby and the creator of Svengali, the writer-artist George Du Maurier had many other accomplishments that are less familiar to modern audiences. This collection traces Du Maurier’s role as a participant in the wider cultural life of his time, restoring him to his proper status as a major Victorian figure...read more

Product Description: Nineteenth-century men of science aligned scientific practice with moral excellence as part of an endeavor to secure cultural authority for their discipline. Anne DeWitt examines how novelists from Elizabeth Gaskell to H. G. Wells responded to this alignment...read more

Product Description: Fashion and celebrity may be twenty-first century obsessions, but they were also key concepts in Regency culture. Both celebrated and condemned for their popularity, silver fork novels were extremely prolific during this period. This study looks at the social and literary impact of this significant genre...read more

Product Description: Reading Victorian Poetry offers close readings of poems from the Victorian era by a  renowned scholar. The selection includes a range of canonical and lesser known writers Skilfully conveys the breadth and diversity of nineteenth-century poetry Offers an ideal balance of canonical and less well-known writers Allows readers to explore the poetry of the Victorian era, through the eyes of one of the most renowned scholars in the field Poets covered include Matthew Arnold,  Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Lewis Carroll, A...read more

Product Description: This stimulating study takes a fresh look at two of Dickens' most widely-studied texts. Part I uses carefully selected short extracts for close textual analysis, while Part II examines the historical and literary contexts and key criticism...read more

"The Colonial Rise of the Novel" provides a feminist and anti-imperialist account of the development of the novel. Far from describing the universality of the novel, as emphasized in previous studies, Azim makes clear how the novel as a genre silenced and excluded both women and people of colour. In what is both a provocative and important contribution to post-colonial and feminist criticism, Azim examines closely texts by writers such as Aphra Behn and Charlotte Bronte. Her conclusions force a radical rethink of Western literature's most enduring form.

Product Description: In Changing Hands, Peter J. Capuano sifts through Victorian literature and culture for changes in the way the human body is imagined in the face of urgent questions about creation, labor, gender, class, and racial categorization, using “hands” (the “distinguishing mark of ...read more

Product Description: This book examines the connections evident between the simultaneous emergence of British modernism and middlebrow literary culture from 1880 to the 1930s. The essays illustrate the mutual influences of modernist and middlebrow authors, critics, publishers and magazines.

Product Description: Victorian Literature: Criticism and Debates offers a comprehensive introduction to the critical debates about Victorian Literature, addressing the most popular and engaging topics in the field today. Separated into twelve sections, this anthology investigates issues as diverse as neo-formalism, sensationalism, religion, evolution, psychology, gender and sexuality, colonialism, imperialism, and economics...read more

Product Description: In recent years the analysis of the intersection of literature and economics has generated a vibrant conversation in literary and cultural studies of the Victorian period. But Aeron Hunt argues that an emphasis on abstraction and impersonality as the crucial features of the Victorian economic experience has led to a partial and ultimately misleading vision of Victorian business culture...read more

Product Description: William Clark Russell wrote more than forty nautical novels. Immensely popular in their time, his works were admired by contemporary writers, such as Conan Doyle, Stevenson and Meredith, while Swinburne, considered him 'the greatest master of the sea, living or dead'...read more

Product Description: The Victorian period was a time of rapid cultural change, which resulted in a huge and varied literary output. A New Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture offers experienced guidance to the literature of nineteenth-century Britain and its social and historical context...read more

Product Description: Through close readings of individual serials and books and archival work on the publication history of the Gardener’s Magazine (1826-44) Sarah Dewis examines the significant contributions John and Jane Webb Loudon made to the gardening press and democratic discourse...read more

Product Description: This collection of essays by established critics and scholars attempts to offer explorations of fresh facets, public and private of the art of the major Victorian novelists, in many cases supported by extended close readings of their novels...read more

In 1859 the popular novelist Wilkie Collins wrote of a ghostly woman, dressed from head to toe in white garments, laying her cold, thin hand on the shoulder of a young man as he walked home late one evening. His novel The Woman in White became hugely successful and popularised a style of writing that came to be known as sensation fiction. This Companion highlights the energy, the impact and the inventiveness of the novels that were written in 'sensational' style, including the work of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood and Florence Marryat. It contains fifteen specially-commissioned essays and includes a chronology and a guide to further reading. Accessible yet rigorous, this Companion questions what influenced the shape and texture of the sensation novel, and what its repercussions were both in the nineteenth century and up to the present day.

Product Description: Focusing on the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Albert D. Pionke's book historicizes the relationship of ritual, class, and public status in Victorian England. His analysis of various discourses related to professionalization suggests that public ritual flourished during the period, especially among the burgeoning ranks of Victorian professions...read more

Product Description: First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Product Description: Oceania, or the South Pacific, loomed large in the Victorian popular imagination. It was a world that interested the Victorians for many reasons, all of which suggested to them that everything was possible there. This collection of essays focuses on Oceania’s impact on Victorian culture, most notably travel writing, photography, international exhibitions, literature, and the world of children...read more