The Cambridge History of Victorian Literature (The New Cambridge History of English Literature)

Cambridge University Press, 3/1/2012
EAN 9780521846257, ISBN10: 0521846250

Hardcover, 787 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 4.1 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

This collaborative History aims to become the standard work on Victorian literature for the twenty-first century. Well-known scholars introduce readers to their particular fields, discuss influential critical debates and offer illuminating contextual detail to situate authors and works in their wider cultural and historical contexts. Sections on publishing and readership and a chronological survey of major literary developments between 1837 and 1901, are followed by essays on topics including sexuality, sensation, cityscapes, melodrama, epic and economics. Victorian writing is placed in its complex relation to the Empire, Europe and America, as well as to Britain's component nations. The final chapters consider how Victorian literature, and the period as a whole, influenced twentieth-century writers. Original, lucid and stimulating, each chapter is an important contribution to Victorian literary studies. Together, the contributors create an engaging discussion of the ways in which the Victorians saw themselves and of how their influence has persisted.

Notes on contributors
Introduction Kate Flint
Part I. Authors, Readers, and Publishers
1. Publishing and the materiality of the book David Finkelstein
2. Victorian reading Leah Price
3. Periodicals and reviewing Hilary Fraser
Part II. Writing Victoria's England
4. The expansion of Britain David Amigoni
5. High Victorianism Janice Carlisle
6. The fin de siècle Stephen Arata
Part III. Modes of Writing
7. Lyric and the lyrical Angela Leighton
8. Epic Herbert Tucker
9. Melodrama Carolyn Williams
10. Sensation Kate Flint
11. Autobiography Linda H. Peterson
12. Comic and satirical John Bowen
13. Innovation and experiment Jerome McGann
14. Writing for children Claudia Nelson
Part IV. Matters of Debate
15. Education Dinah Birch
16. Spirituality Elisabeth Jay
17. Material Elaine Freedgood
18. Economics and finance Mary Poovey
19. History Andrew Sanders
20. Sexuality Sharon Marcus
21. Aesthetics Elizabeth Helsinger
22. Science and literature Gillian Beer
23. Subjectivity, psychology, and the imagination Helen Small
24. Cityscapes Deborah Nord
25. The rural scene
Victorian literature and the natural world Francis O'Gorman
26. 'The annihilation of space and time'
literature and technology Clare Pettitt
Part V. Spaces of Writing
27. Spaces of the nineteenth-century novel Isobel Armstrong
28. National and regional literatures Sara L. Maurer
29. Britain and Europe Nicholas Dames
30. Victorian empire Pablo Mukherjee
31. Writing about America Deirdre David
Part VI. Victorian Afterlives
32. 1900 and the début de siècle
poetry, drama, fiction Joseph Bristow
33. The future of Victorian literature Jay Clayton
Select bibliography
Index.