This book develops new interdisciplinary perspectives on constructions of old age in literary, legal, scientific, and popular cultures of the nineteenth century. The volume reveals how nineteenth-century debates about old age propelled the formation of a range of new medical, scientific, and juridical disciplines. It sheds light on the ways in which literature participated in these processes and looks at a broad range of texts by canonical authors, such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Henry James, and by authors who have recently attracted growing...