An engaging guide to a rich literary heritage, The Stanford Companion presents a fascinating parade of novels, authors, publishers, editors, reviewers, illustrators, and periodicals that created the culture of Victorian fiction. Its more than 6,000 alphabetical entries provide an incomparable range of useful and little-known source material, its scholarship enlivened by the author's wit and candor.

With over 900 biographical entries, more than 600 novels synopsized, and a wealth of background material on the publishers, reviewers and readers of the age the Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction is the fullest account of the period's fiction ever published. Now in a second edition, the book has been revised and a generous selection of images have been chosen to illustrate various aspects of Victorian publishing, writing, and reading life. Organised alphabetically, the information provided will be a boon to students, researchers and all lovers of reading. The entries, though concise, meet the high standards demanded by modern scholarship. The writing - marked by Sutherland's characteristic combination of flair, clarity and erudition - is of such a high standard that the book is a joy to read, as well as a definitive work of reference.

This companion to Victorian popular fiction includes more than 300 cross-referenced entries on works written for the British mass market. Biographical sketches cover the writers and their publishers, the topics that concerned them and the genres they helped to establish or refine. Entries introduce readers to long-overlooked authors who were widely read in their time, with suggestions for further reading and emerging resources for the study of popular fiction.

The Companion to the Victorian Novel provides contextual and critical information about the entire range of British fiction published between 1837 and 1901. Provides contextual and critical information about the entire range of British fiction published during the Victorian period. Explains issues such as Victorian religions, class structure, and Darwinism to those who are unfamiliar with them. Comprises original, accessible chapters written by renowned and emerging scholars in the field of Victorian studies. Ideal for students and researchers seeking up-to-the-minute coverage of contexts and trends, or as a starting point for a survey course.

Victorian novels remain enormously popular today: some continue to be made into films, while authors such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot are firmly established in the canon and taught at all levels. These works have also attracted a great deal of critical attention, with much current scholarship examining the novel in relation to its historical, political, and cultural contexts. This reference book is an introductory guide to the Victorian novel, its background, and its legacy. Each chapter is written by an expert contributor and offers a fresh account of past, current, and new directions in scholarship. The volume is divided into several broad sections, with chapters in each section treating more specialized topics. The first section looks at the emergence of the Victorian novel and its literary precursors, with particular emphasis on the growth of serialization and the development of the novel of syndication. The second explores significant social and cultural facets of nineteenth-century British literature, while the third discusses the principal features of different genres, such as ghost stories, the Gothic, detective fiction, the social problem novel, and contemporary film adaptations. Individual authors are examined in the fourth section, while the fifth overviews various critical approaches and their application to nineteenth-century fiction.

This comprehensive collection offers a complete introduction to one of the most popular literary forms of the Victorian period, its key authors and works, its major themes, and its lasting legacy. Places key authors and novels in their cultural and historical context Includes studies of major topics such as race, gender, melodrama, theatre, poetry, realism in fiction, and connections to other art forms Contributions from top international scholars approach an important literary genre from a range of perspectives Offers both a pre and post-history of the genre to situate it in the larger tradition of Victorian publishing and literature Incorporates coverage of traditional research and cutting-edge contemporary scholarship

This book is about selected Victorian texts and authors that in many cases have never before been subject to sustained scholarly attention. Taking inspiration from the pioneeringly capacious approach to the hidden hinterland of Victorian fiction adopted by scholars like John Sutherland and Franco Moretti, this energetically revisionist volume takes advantage of recent large-scale digitisation projects that allow unprecedented access to hitherto neglected literary texts and archives. Blending lively critical engagement with individual texts and close attention to often surprising trends in the production and reception of prose fiction across the Victorian era, this book will be of use to anyone interested in re-evaluating the received meta-narratives of Victorian literary history. With an afterword by John Sutherland

In this first systematic assessment of Ruffini's literary achievement, the seven novels that are apparently so different from each other emerge as an aesthetically coherent and individualized contribution to the mid-Victorian fictional canon. Composed in English by an Italian exile resident in Paris, they describe interactions among men and women of many nationalities and trace interesting European journeys and pilgrimages during the early days of mass tourism. While thus documenting such phenomena as expanding rail networks, holiday resorts and health spas, the novels dramatize, more importantly, the inadequacy of narrowly local and intolerant perspectives. The protagonists must gain a broadly cosmopolitan vision and sense of mutuality as they pursue the common quest for self-integration and for a purpose in life. A patriotic commitment like that which had engaged Ruffini in his youthful Mazzinian phase cannot now offer that purpose, and the narratives convey strong scepticism about other ideals, such as romantic love, too. More positively the stories contain many dedicated physicians, who practice a holistic medicine and who thereby substitute for the often sinister priests of a corrupt religious establishment. Ministering to the humanity that Ruffini typically portrays as sick or wounded and tormented by misanthropy and guilt, they are the chief mitigators of the bleakness of the modern condition.

This introductory guide to the canon of Victorian literature covers 61 novels by authors from Jane Austen to Emile Zola. Brief critical essays describe what each book is about and argue for its cultural, historical and literary importance. Literary canons remain a subject of debate but critics, readers and students continue to find them useful as overviews--and examinations--of the great works within a given period or culture. The Victorian canon is particularly rich with splendid novels that educate, enlighten and entertain. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Reading the Victorian Novel is a clear and engaging introduction to Victorian fiction. In this book, Annette Federico invites readers to turn their attention to the bursting imaginations and formal inventiveness of Victorian novelists themselves. Five conventions prevailed in the building of a Victorian novel: serialisation, narration, plotting, description, and characterization. Each chapter is rich in examples of these practices and attentive to the historical and cultural contexts that shaped them, as well as to the responses and judgments of Victorian readers and contemporary scholars. Federico keeps the focus on the writer’s choices and the reader’s experience––on the meeting of minds and imaginations against the backdrop of history. Reading the Victorian Novel is an appreciative and discerning guide for anyone with an interest in the resonant and vibrant worlds of nineteenth-century fiction.