This set of 42 volumes, originally published between 1965 and 2009, are authored by renowned international scholars in the field of nineteenth century literature. They explore a variety of authors such as Dickens, Hardy, Brontë, Austen, Gaskell, Zola, Meredith, Eliot, Gissing, Hawthorne, James and Wharton. The titles also examine a wide range of themes including gender, class, religion, politics, philosophy and music.
Edited
By Alfred Bendixen, Annette Zilversmit
December 13, 2017
First published in 1992, this volume of essays celebrates the revival of Edith Wharton’s critical reputation. It offers a variety of approaches to the work of Wharton and examines largely neglected texts. It differs from many other collections of Wharton criticism in its insistence that the entire ...
Edited
By Jane Millgate
December 13, 2017
First published in 1978, this collection of papers, first presented at the thirteenth annual Conference on Editorial Problems in 1977, focuses on the editing of nineteenth-century fiction. Four of the papers are devoted to single authors – Dickens, Thackeray, Hardy and Zola – while the fifth takes ...
By Angus Easson
December 13, 2017
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...
By John McVeagh
December 13, 2017
First published in 1970, this study demonstrates both the range and essential unity of the works of Mrs. Gaskell. The author analyses the novels of social criticism, the biography of Charlotte Brontë and the novels of country life as distinct expressions of her genius, commenting on recurrent ...
By Allan Gardner Lloyd Smith
December 13, 2017
First published in 1984, this book offers a unique interpretation of Hawthorne’s work, making use of perspectives opened up by Derrida in his work on Rousseau. It offers a psycho-biography of the author as discoverable in the texts and avoids a simplistic Freudian analysis. In doing so, it ...
By Carol Colatrella
December 13, 2017
First published in 1990. Balzac, Zola and Faulkner all drew upon the principles of evolutionary theory to represent man’s place in nature and his struggle for survival in their major series La Comèdie humaine, Rougon-Macquart and the Yoknapatawpha fiction. This book focuses on the ‘first’ novels in...
By Deborah Guth
December 13, 2017
Though Friedrich Schiller enjoyed prominent literary standing and great popularity in nineteenth century literary England, his influence has been largely neglected in recent scholarship on the period. First published in 2003, this book explores the substantial evidence of the importance of the ...
Edited
By Martin Ryle, Jenny Bourne Taylor
December 13, 2017
First published in 2005, this collection of essays brings together British, European and North American literary critics and cultural historians with diverse specialities and interests to demonstrate the range of contemporary perspectives through which George Gissing’s fiction can be viewed. It ...
By Peter Widdowson
December 13, 2017
First published in 1989, this study investigates Hardy not so much in terms of his novels but as he has been constituted as a major figure in English literature. Using Hardy as a case-study, it looks at how a ‘great writer’ is produced in sociological terms, analysing the critical, cultural and ...
By Carl Weber
December 13, 2017
First published in 1940 and revised in 1965, this work by the distinguished Hardy Scholar, Carl J. Weber, traces Hardy’s literary career from High Brockhampton to the grave in Poet’s corner, Westminster Abbey. Using a multitude of letters, it explains why Thomas Hardy wrote, and how his books grew ...
Edited
By Ian Fletcher
December 13, 2017
There is no English novelist whose reputation has fluctuated so violently as that of George Meredith. First published in 1971, this volume of essays reassesses the works of George Meredith. Despite his unevenness, the essays demonstrate that Meredith was an important experimental writer and as one ...
By David Musselwhite
December 13, 2017
First published in 1987, this book engages directly with a selection of major texts from the traditional English literature syllabus and applies some of the techniques from the work of theorists such as Macherey, Balibar, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan and Deleuze. Focusing on questions of class and ...