Ancestry and Narrative in Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Blood Relations from Edgeworth to Hardy

by Sophie Gilmartin

Overview

This study addresses the question of why ideas of ancestry and kinship were so important in nineteenth-century society, and particularly in the Victorian novel. Sophie Gilmartin discusses what makes people believe that they are part of a certain region, race or nation, and what part is played by superstitious belief, invented traditions and fictions. Gilmartin's study shows that ideas of ancestry and kinship, and the narratives inspired by or invented around them, were of profound significance in the construction of Victorian identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521023573
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/24/2005
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture , #18
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.63(d)

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Textual note: the novels; Introduction; 1. Oral and written genealogies in Edgeworth's The Absentee; 2. A mirror for matriarchs: the cult of Mary Queen of Scots in nineteenth-century literature; 3. Pedigree, nation, race: the case of Disraeli's Sybil and Tancred; 4. 'A sort of Royal family': alternative pedigrees and class in Meredith's Evan Harrington; 5. Pedigree, sati and the widow in Meredith's The Egoist; 6. Pedigree and forgetting in Hardy; 7. Geology and genealogy: Hardy's The Well-Beloved; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...Gilmartin provides interesting readings of a number of novels often passed over in the study of Victorian fiction, and she heightens the reader's awareness of a subject that was important to the Victorians and should be given due consideration by those who would understand the age's fiction." Choice

From the Publisher