The Victorian Novel: A Guide to Criticism

This guide looks at how the Victorian novel has been read over the past hundred years. Unlike other critical guides, it not only provides students with examples of significant strands of criticism, but also helps them to make sense of these articles and extracts by means of a narrative and critical framework. The novelists referred to are the acknowledged great names of Victorian fiction, including the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope. A short opening section describing and representing early critical responses is complemented by a longer second section looking at current themes in criticism, such as genre, gender, politics, science, language, the canon, and modes of production. The volume as a whole enhances students’ critical repertoire, encourages them to recognise the situatedness of all criticism, and helps them to engage with critical debates about the Victorian novel.