This inspiring survey challenges conventional ways of viewing the Victorian novel. Provides time maps and overviews of historical and social contexts. Considers the relationship between the Victorian novel and historical, religious and bibliographic writing. Features short biographies of over forty Victorian authors, including Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Offers close readings of over 30 key texts, among them Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), as well as key presences, such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (Pt 1, 1676, Pt 2, 1684). Also covers topics such as colonialism, scientific speculation, the psychic and the supernatural, and working class reading.

An accessible and wide-ranging introduction to the era, this Companion explores influential dramatic works by Ibsen, Shaw and Wilde; the poetry of mourning; novelistic genres, including social problem novels and sensation fiction; and the literature of the fin de siècle’s aesthetes and decadents. Cultural and historical debates – focussing on empire, national identity, science and evolution, print culture and gender – supply essential context alongside discussion of relevant critical theory.

First published in 1979, this book looks at every aspect of the life and work of Elizabeth Gaskell, including her lesser known novels and writings — especially those concerning life in the industrial north of Victorian England. It shows how her work springs from a culture and society which pervades all she thought and wrote. An opening chapter explores her religion, culture, friendships and family. The major works are considered in turn and background material relevant to the novels’ industrial scenes is presented. The process of literary creation is charted in material drawn from letters and by examination of the manuscripts. Her short stories, journalism and letters are also considered.

In this video, professional masseuse and aromatherapist, Francesca Witherby talks with host Cecelia Yates about how her these techniques can be used to alleviate the symptoms of stress, tension and fatigue. Methods outlined in the video include: techniques of massage, use of essential oils, and blending and recipes for the use of essential oils.

Both an investigative story and genealogical study that highlights a key period in music history, this chronicle closely examines the roles of John Broadwood--the most successful piano maker in late-Georgian London--and of one of his professional customers, Mr. John Langshaw, an organist and music master.

"The Empire Inside is unique in its tight focus on the objects from one geographical location, and their deployment in one genre of fiction. This combination results in a powerful study with a wealth of fine formal analyses of literary texts and a similar trove of marvelous historical data." ---Elaine Freedgood, New York University "In The Empire Inside, Suzanne Daly does a wonderful job integrating an array of primary materials, especially novels and journal essays, to show the extent to which these 'foreign' colonial products of India represented absolutely central aspects of domestic life, at once part of the unremarkable everyday experience of Victorians and rich with meanings." ---Timothy Carens, College of Charleston By the early nineteenth century, imperial commodities had become commonplace in middle-class English homes. Such Indian goods as tea, textiles, and gemstones led double lives, functioning at once as exotic foreign artifacts and as markers of proper Englishness. The Empire Inside: Indian Commodities in Victorian Domestic Novels reveals how Indian imports encapsulated new ideas about both the home and the world in Victorian literature and culture. In novels by Charlotte Bront , Charles Dickens, and Anthony Trollope, the regularity with which Indian commodities appear bespeaks their burgeoning importance both ideologically and commercially. Such domestic details as the drinking of tea and the giving of shawls as gifts point us toward suppressed connections between the feminized realm of private life and the militarized realm of foreign commerce. Tracing the history of Indian imports yields a record of the struggles for territory and political power that marked the coming-into-being of British India; reading the novels of the period for the ways in which they infuse meaning into these imports demonstrates how imperialism was written into the fabric of everyday life in nineteenth-century England. Situated at the intersection of Victorian studies, material cultural studies, gender studies, and British Empire studies, The Empire Inside is written for academics, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates in all of these fields. Suzanne Daly is Associate Professor of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst.