“A large encyclopedic study of fifteen conventions of Victorian fiction—including women, marriage, coincidence, the orphan, memory, the occult. The most striking quality of the book is its wide-ranging grasp of all kinds of Victorian materials, for although its announced intention is to treat the conventions of fiction, it makes use of supporting evidence in letters, memoirs, periodicals, illustrations, and other belles lettres…This is an immensely learned, ambitious, and intelligently written book that will probably become a standard and should be in every library.”
Choice
“A large encyclopedic study of fifteen conventions of Victorian fiction—including women, marriage, coincidence, the orphan, memory, the occult. The most striking quality of the book is its wide-ranging grasp of all kinds of Victorian materials, for although its announced intention is to treat the conventions of fiction, it makes use of supporting evidence in letters, memoirs, periodicals, illustrations, and other belles lettres…This is an immensely learned, ambitious, and intelligently written book that will probably become a standard and should be in every library.” —Choice
John Reed is professor of English at Wayne State University. His most recent books include Victorian Conventions (1975) and The Natural History of H.G. Wells (1982), both published by Ohio University Press. More info →
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Paperback
978-0-8214-0828-5
Retail price: $39.95,
S.
Release date: January 1986
574 pages
Rights: World
Hardcover
978-0-8214-0147-7
Retail price: $69.95,
S.
Release date: January 1986
574 pages
Rights: World
Educating Women
Cultural Conflict and Victorian Literature
By Laura Morgan Green
In 1837, when Queen Victoria came to the throne, no institution of higher education in Britain was open to women. By the end of the century, a quiet revolution had occurred: women had penetrated even the venerable walls of Oxford and Cambridge and could earn degrees at the many new universities founded during Victoria’s reign. During the same period, novelists increasingly put intellectually ambitious heroines students, teachers, and frustrated scholars—at the center of their books.
Literary Criticism | European | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh · Women’s Studies · Literature · Victorian Studies
Bleak Houses
Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction
By Lisa Surridge
The Offenses Against the Person Act of 1828 opened magistrates’ courts to abused working-class wives. Newspapers in turn reported on these proceedings, and in this way the Victorian scrutiny of domestic conduct began. But how did popular fiction treat “private” family violence? Bleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction traces novelists’ engagement with the wife-assault debates in the public press between 1828 and the turn of the century.Lisa
Literary Criticism | European | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh · Victorian Studies
Victorian Will
By John Robert Reed
John R. Reed, author of Victorian Conventions, The Natural History of H.G. Wells, and Decadent Style, has published a new critical study examining nineteenth-century British attitudes toward free will, determinism, providence, and fate. His new book, Victorian Will, argues for the need to understand a body of literature in its broadest historical and intellectual context.
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