E-Book Overview
This inspiring survey challenges conventional ways of viewing the Victorian novel.Provides time maps and overviews of historical and social contexts.Considers the relationship between the Victorian novel and historical, religious and bibliographic writing.Features short biographies of over forty Victorian authors, including Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Robert Louis Stevenson.Offers close readings of over 30 key texts, among them Charlotte Bront?’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), as well as key presences, such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (Pt 1, 1676, Pt 2, 1684).Also covers topics such as colonialism, scientific speculation, the psychic and the supernatural, and working class reading.
E-Book Content
The Victorian Novel Louis James The Victorian Novel BLACKWELL GUIDES TO LITERATURE Series editor: Jonathan Wordsworth This new series offers the student thorough and lively introductions to literary periods, movements, and, in some instances, authors (Shakespeare) and genres (the novel), from Anglo-Saxon to the Postmodern. Each volume is written by a leading specialist to be invitingly accessible and informative. Chapters are devoted to the coverage of cultural context, the provision of brief but detailed biographical essays on the authors concerned, critical coverage of key works, and surveys of themes and topics, together with bibliographies of selected further reading. Students new to a period of study (for example, the English Renaissance, or the Romantic period) or to a period genre (the nineteenth-century novel, Victorian poetry) will discover all they need to know, to orientate and ground themselves in their studies, in volumes that are as stimulating to read as they are convenient to use. Published The English Renaissance The Victorian Novel Twentieth-Century American Poetry Children’s Literature The Gothic Andrew Hadfield Louis James Christopher MacGowan Peter Hunt David Punter and Glennis Byron Forthcoming Anglo-Saxon Literature Renaissance Drama Literary Theory Modernism Mark C. R. Amodio Peter Womack Gregory Castle Heesok Chang The Victorian Novel Louis James © 2006 by Louis James BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Louis James to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1 2006 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data James, Louis, Dr. The Victorian novel / Louis James. p. cm.—(Blackwell guides to literature) Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-631-22627-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-631-22627-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-631-22628-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-631-22628-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. English fiction—19th century— History and criticism. 2. Romanticism—Great Britain. I. Title. II. Series. PR871.J36 2006 823¢.809145—dc22 2005012331 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 11/13.5 pt Dante by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd, Hong Kong Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by T J International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices