First published in 1987, these essays deal with the three major novels of George Meredith. It explores in particular Meredith’s feminism and demonstrates how each novel embodies his very modern views of the relations between the sexes.

This book will be of interest to those studying 19^th Century literature and feminism.

First published in 1968, this book sets out to refute the idea of Trollope as a ‘mild cathedral-town novelist, describing storms in ecclesiastical tea cups’ which prevailed at the time in spite of his stature during his lifetime. The author reveals the full strength and range of Trollope’s achievement and provides an excellent introduction to further exploration of the novels. Two sections — ‘Narrative Method’ and ‘Subject-Matter’ — are used as the basis from which the author examines key themes in Trollope’s work, with instructive extracts from the novels included to...

First published in 1988, this book looks at the enormous impact Dickens’ writings had on American novelists in the second half of the nineteenth century. Dickens dominated not only popular taste but the American novel for sixty years and the author argues that even the most original writers showed themselves again and again to be in ‘conscious sympathy’ with Dickens. Along with Dickens, this book examines four radically different American writers — Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James and Frank Norris — whose debt to Dickens, the author asserts, is nevertheless clearly...

First published in 1969, this book asserts that two concepts, structure and praxis, make it impractical for scholars to ignore the necessity of a theory of the novel — with the term ‘classical novel’ used to cover western fiction. The author argues that the novel is fundamentally an ‘enterprise’ — an aspect of the praxis of a particular social class — and that the ways of orthodox scholarship are also a praxis. The investigator must enquire into the nature of their questions as those traditionally put to literature are inspired by ‘irrelevant’ nineteenth century...

First published in 1975, this study is concerned with the representation of non-European people in English popular fiction in the period from 1858-1920. It examines the developments in thinking about people across the world and shows how they affected writers’ views of evolution, race, heredity and of the life of the so-called ‘primitive’ man.

This book will be of interest to those studying 19^th century literature.

In the novels of Emile Zola, the pain and horror of working class life was pushed into the drawing rooms of polite society. Zola set out to shock and to question the assumptions of fiction and of comfortable, settled lives. The impact of his writing was far wider than France, and his attacks on the pillars of society gave him an international reputation.

First published in 1985, this biography of Zola does much more than simply describe Zola as a writer, and his literary impact. It brings together the many strands of Zola’s life and creates an impression of a remarkable, if often...

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...

First published in 1971. The book examines the presentation of the urban and industrial working classes in Victorian fiction. It considers the different types of working men and women who appear in fiction, the environments they are shown to inhabit, and the use of phonetics to indicate the sound of working class voices. Evidence is drawn from a wide range of major and minor fiction, and new light is cast on Dickens, Mrs Gaskell, Charles Kingsley, George Gissing, Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Morrison. This book would be of interest to students of literature, sociology and history.

First published 1986. In this book the author refutes the notion that Gissing’s weaknesses as a novelist are associated with defects in his personality and argues that the power of his writing stemmed from his divided character. Gissing’s permanently divided emotions on poverty, reformism, women and art were, at his best, the reason he could write so convincingly about them. This analysis of Gissing’s imagination and the fictional development in his major works shows that the effectiveness of his novels depends largely on these dichotomies and opposites. This work covers the whole...

First published in 1977, this book studies three important nineteenth-century novelists: Mrs Gaskell, William Hale White and Thomas Hardy. They are all provincial novelists who wrote about social change and the attendant problems and pressures this brought with it. Unlike previous critics, who have tended to concentrate on her ‘social-problem’ novels, here the author treats Gaskell’s Sylvia’s Lovers and Cousin Phillis as central texts. However a chapter also examines Gaskell and Engels perception of social change in Manchester. This book also seeks to correct Hale...