First published in 1987. While there have been commentaries on his humour, his seriousness, his social concerns, and other specific aspects of his work such accounts have only tended to divide our understanding of the novels, to lead us to see them as failures of artistic unity. In this book the author seeks to address this question of unity and find a terminology that can treat language, plot and representation of reality as a coherent imaginative effort. This thesis is worked out in detail with reference to several of the novels, and represents a challenging re-evaluation Dickens’...

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 from ideas, emotions and experiences to the printed volumes that have delighted the world.

This book will be of interest to those studying the works of Thomas Hardy and 19^th century literature.

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 of the masters of the English novel.

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

First published in 2009, this book investigates the cultural significance of nineteenth-century women’s writing and reading practices. Beginning with an examination of non-fictional diaries and the practice of diary writing, it assesses the interaction between the fictional diary and other forms of literary production such as epistolary narrative, the periodical, the factual document and sensation fiction. The discrepancies between the private diary and its use as a narrative device are explored through the writings of Frances Burney, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anne Brontë, Dinah Craik, Wilkie...

First published in 1987. Many Victorian novels that considered social problems made extensive use of contemporary source material for their descriptions. This book aims to provide a greater acquaintance with this non-literary material — illustrating and exemplifying issues that the authors treated imaginatively. The material is divided into parts dealing with: the industrial north of England, London and the agricultural poor. Extracts from writings that bear directly on the fiction of writers like Dickens and Gaskell are featured, as are Government Blue Books and newspaper reports and...

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 body of Wharton’s work deserves attention.

This book will be of interest in those studying nineteenth century and American literature.

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.

First published in 1968, this study is an exciting and challenging introduction to the writings of Sir Walter Scott. The author discusses the more striking features of Scott’s style — his use of language and characterisation — and also evaluates the contemporary moral and political attitudes portrayed in the novels. The use of literary conventions of the time is examined with reference to Scott’s work and extracts exemplify in particular the use of the Heroic. While admitting Scott’s faults as a writer, the author presents a general view of him as one whose works deserve deeper...

First published in 1966, this book collects six essays which discuss the experience of social change as it reveals itself in the work of several nineteenth century novelists. In the novels studied, and the discussion of fiction that follows, the authors argue that all these novelists’ attempts to confront social change — to connect old with new, past with present and the attempted inclusiveness of vision in a changing society — sooner or later fail. The essays are polemic in arguing against the contemporary critical consensus that this failure is a limitation of imaginative...

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...