A Concise Companion to the Victorian Novel

This volume presents fresh approaches to classic Victorian fiction from 1830-1900. Opens up for the reader the cultural world in which the Victorian novel was written and read. Crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. Provides fresh perspectives on how Victorian fiction relates to different contexts, such as class, sexuality, empire, psychology, law and biology.

Notes on Contributors ix Acknowledgements xii List of illustrations xiii Chronology xiv Introduction 1 Francis O’Gorman 1 ‘The sun and moon were made to give them light’: Empire in the Victorian Novel 4 Cannon Schmitt 2 ‘Seeing is believing?’: Visuality and Victorian Fiction 25 Kate Flint 3 ‘The boundaries of social intercourse’: Class in the Victorian Novel 47 James Eli Adams 4 Legal subjects, legal objects: The Law and Victorian Fiction 71 Clare Pettitt 5 ‘The withering of the individual’: Psychology in the Victorian Novel 91 Nicholas Dames 6 ‘Telling of my weekly doings’: The Material Culture of the Victorian Novel 113 Mark W. Turner 7 ‘Farewell poetry and aerial flights’: The Function of the Author and Victorian Fiction 134 Richard Salmon 8 Everywhere and nowhere: Sexuality in the Victorian Novel 156 Carolyn Dever 9 ‘One of the larger lost continents’: Religion in the Victorian Novel 180 Michael Wheeler 10 ‘The difference between human beings’: Biology in the Victorian Novel 202 Angelique Richardson 11 ‘One great confederation?’: Europe in the Victorian Novel 232 John Rignall 12 ‘A long deep sob of that mysterious wondrous happiness that is one with pain’: Emotion in the Victorian Novel 253 Francis O’Gorman Index 271