The Oxford Handbook of the Victorian Novel

by Lisa Rodensky (Editor)

Overview

Much has been written about the Victorian novel, and for good reason. The cultural power it exerted (and, to some extent, still exerts) is beyond question. The Oxford Handbook of the Victorian Novel contributes substantially to this thriving scholarly field by offering new approaches to familiar topics (the novel and science, the Victorian Bildungroman) as well as essays on topics often overlooked (the novel and classics, the novel and the OED, the novel, and allusion). Manifesting the increasing interdisciplinarity of Victorian studies, its essays situate the novel within a complex network of relations (among, for instance, readers, editors, reviewers, and the novelists themselves; or among different cultural pressures - the religious, the commercial, the legal). The handbook's essays also build on recent bibliographic work of remarkable scope and detail, responding to the growing attention to print culture. With a detailed introduction and 36 newly commissioned chapters by leading and emerging scholars — beginning with Peter Garside's examination of the early nineteenth-century novel and ending with two essays proposing the 'last Victorian novel' — the handbook attends to the major themes in Victorian scholarship while at the same time creating new possibilities for further research. Balancing breadth and depth, the clearly-written, nonjargon -laden essays provide readers with overviews as well as original scholarship, an approach which will serve advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and established scholars. As the Victorians get further away from us, our versions of their culture and its novel inevitably change; this Handbook offers fresh explorations of the novel that teach us about this genre, its culture, and, by extension, our own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198744689
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/11/2016
Series:	Oxford Handbooks
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	830
Sales rank:	823,678
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Lisa Rodensky, Associate Professor, Wellesley College

Lisa Rodensky is the Barbara Morris Caspersen Associate Professor in the Humanities (2011-14) at Wellesley College. She is the author of The Crime in Mind: Criminal Responsibility and the Victorian Novel (2003) and the editor of Decadent Poetry from Wilde to Naidu (2006). Her essays have appeared in Victorian Literature and Culture and Essays in Criticism. She is currently at work on an analysis of the critical vocabulary of the nineteenth-century novel review.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Lisa RodenskyBeginnings.The Early Nineteenth-Century English Novel, 1820-1836, Peter GarsideNew Histories of English Literature and the Rise of the Novel, 1835-1859, William McKelvyGenre, Criticism and the Early Victorian Novel, Rebecca Edwards NewmanPublishing, Reading, Reviewing, Quoting, Censoring.Publishing the Victorian Novel, Rachel Sagner BuurmaThe Victorian Novel and Its Readers, Debra GettelmanThe Victorian Novel and the Reviews, Solveig C. RobinsonThe Victorian Novel and the OED, Lynda MugglestoneThe Novel and Censorship in Late-Victorian England, BarbaraLeckieThe Victorian Novel Elsewhere.Victorian Novels in France, Marie-Francoise CachinVictorian Literature and Russian Culture: Translation, Reception, Influence, Affinity, Julie BucklerThe Victorian Novel and America, Amanda ClaybaughColonial India and Victorian Storytelling, Margery SabinTechnologies: Communication, Travel, VisualThe Victorian Novel and Communication Networks, Richard MenkeTechnologies of Travel and the Victorian Novel, Alison ByerlyVictorian Photography and the Novel, Jennifer Green-LewisThe Middle.Novels of the 1860s, Janice CarlisleCommerce, Work, Professions.Industrialism and the Victorian Novel, Evan HorwitzThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Money: Max Weber, Silas Marner, and the Victorian Novel, George LevineThe Novel and the Professions, Jennifer RuthGentleman's Latin, Lady's Greek, Kenneth HaynesThe Novel and Other Disciplines.The Victorian Novel and Science, Jonathan SmithThe Victorian Novel and Medicine, Meegan KennedyNaturalizing the Mind in the Victorian Novel: Consciousness in Wilkie Collins's Poor Miss Finch and Thomas Hardy's Woodlanders Two Case Studies, Suzy AngerThe Victorian Novel and the Law, Jan-Melissa SchrammThe Novel and Religion: Catholicism and Victorian Women's Novels, Patrick R. O'MalleyThe Victorian Novel and Horticulture, Lynn VoskuilThe Victorian Novel and Theater, Emily AllenPoetry and Criticism.Verse Versus the Novel, James NajarianPoetic Allusion and the Novel, Philip HorneThe Novelist as Critic, Christopher RicksDistinguishing the Victorian Novel.The Moral Scope of the English Bildungsroman, Julia Prewitt BrownThree Matters of Style, Mark LambertEndings.The Novel, its Critics, and the University: A New Beginning?, Anna VaninskayaThe Victorian Novel and the New Woman, Talia SchafferThe Last Victorian NovelSlapstick Noir: The Secret Agent Works the Victorian Novel, Rosemarie BodenheimerThe Quest of the Silver Fleece, by W. E. B. Du Bois, Daniel Hack