George Eliot in Context (Literature in Context)

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 5/30/2013
EAN 9780521764087, ISBN10: 0521764084

Hardcover, 368 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English

Prodigiously learned, alive to the massive social changes of her time, defiant of many Victorian orthodoxies, George Eliot has always challenged her readers. She is at once chronicler and analyst, novelist of nostalgia and monumental thinker. In her great novel Middlemarch she writes of 'that tempting range of relevancies called the universe'. This volume identifies a range of 'relevancies' that inform both her fictional and her non-fictional writings. The range and scale of her achievement are brought into focus by cogent essays on the many contexts - historical, intellectual, political, social, cultural - to her work. In addition there are discussions of her critical history and legacy, as well as of the material conditions of production and distribution of her novels and her journalism. The volume enables fuller understanding and appreciation, from a twenty-first-century standpoint, of the life and work of one of the nineteenth century's major writers.

Preface
Chronology Margaret Harris
Part I. Life and Afterlife
1. George Eliot's life Kathryn Hughes
2. Publishers and publication Joanne Shattock
3. Editions of George Eliot's work Joanne Shattock
4. Genre Nancy Henry
5. The biographical tradition Margaret Harris
6. Afterlife Margaret Harris
Part II. Critical Fortunes
7. Critical responses
to 1900 Juliette Atkinson
8. Critical responses
1900–70 Juliette Atkinson
9. Critical responses
1970–present Juliette Atkinson
Part III. Cultural and Social Contexts
10. Class Ruth Livesey
11. Dress Clair Hughes
12. Education Elizabeth Gargano
13. Etiquette Judith Flanders
14. Families and kinship Josie Billington
15. Gender and the woman question Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi
16. Historiography Joanne Wilkes
17. Industry and technology Richard Menke
18. Interiors Judith Flanders
19. Landscape John Rignall
20. Language Melissa Raines
21. Law Kieran Dolin
22. Metropolitanism John Rignall
23. Money Dermot Coleman
24. Music Delia Da Sousa
25. Philosophy Moira Gatens
26. Politics Robert Dingley
27. Race Alicia Carroll
28. Religion Oliver Lovesey
29. Romanticism Joanne Wilkes
30. Rural life Carol Martin
31. The science of the mind Pauline Nestor
32. Secularism Michael Rectenwald
33. Theatre Lynn Voskuil
34. Transport Ruth Livesey
35. Travel and tourism Judith Johnston
36. Visual arts Leonée Ormond
Further reading
Index.