A Concise Companion to the Victorian Novel

In the words of its editor, Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Leeds, this collection of essays aims to present a “sympathetic but searching” survey of the nineteenth century novel from a distinctively historicist perspective. The texts are seen, “as far as historical distance will allow”, in relationship to, and interacting with, their own time. A year‐by‐year chronology of cultural and literary events from 1830 to the death of Victoria in 1901 frames the intention perfectly. A total of 12 discursive essays by British and American academics follow Francis O'Gorman's short introduction. As in other volumes in...