Book Cover
E-book
Author James, Louis, 1933-

Title The Victorian novel / Louis James
Published Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2006
Online access available from:
Wiley Online Books
Wiley Online Books   
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Description 1 online resource (xii, 249 pages) : illustrations
Series Blackwell guides to literature
Blackwell guides to literature.
Contents Time maps -- Changing perspectives -- Foundations -- Key authors -- Key texts -- Topics
Summary This survey challenges conventional ways of viewing the Victorian novel. The author explores the extremely varied and often experimental prose fiction of the period, paying attention to contemporary bestsellers as well as to major literary works. He reminds the reader that most Victorian novelists had their imaginations shaped not by high Victorianism, but by the ideals and sensibility of the Romantic period, and suggests that their work therefore embodies a tension between idealism and a new materialist objectivity. The volume is based on the premise that a broad understanding of the Victorian period powerfully assists our understanding of its prose fiction. For this reason, the author not only provides overviews of the historical and social contexts of the Victorian novel, but also considers its relationship to historical, religious and biographical writing. The literary achievements of major novelists receive individual entries, while a section on topics considers issues such as colonialism, scientific speculation, the psychic and the supernatural, and working-class reading
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-240) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
Romanticism -- Great Britain
English fiction.
Romanticism.
Great Britain.
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2005012331
ISBN 9780470775844
047077584X
1405152281
9781405152280