The Victorian Baby in Print

Literary Cultures and Nineteenth-Century Childhoods

Kristine Moruzi, Michelle J. Smith

Literary Cultures and Nineteenth-Century Childhoods explores the construction of the child and the development of texts for children in the nineteenth century through the application of fresh theoretical approaches and attention to aspects of literary childhoods that have only recently begun to be illuminated. This scope enables examination of the child in canonical nineteenth-century novels by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, and Thomas Hardy alongside well-known fiction intended for young readers by George MacDonald, Christabel Coleridge, and Kate Greenaway. The century was also distinctive for the rise of the children’s magazine, and this book broadens the definition of literary cultures to include magazines produced both by, and for, young people. The volume examines how the child and family are conceptualised, how children are positioned as readers in genres including the domestic novel, school story, Robinsonade, and fantasy fiction, how literary childhoods are written and politicised, and how childhood intersects with perceptions of animals and the natural environment. The range of chapters in this collection and the texts they consider demonstrates the variability and fluidity of literary cultures and nineteenth-century childhoods.

The Routledge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Ludlow, Rebecca Styler

The Routledge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell brings together twenty-five chapters by emerging and established scholars that address Gaskell’s works, networks, contexts, and legacies. Contributors draw on a range of approaches including ecocriticism, queer theory, and studies in emotion. Particular attention is paid to the intersections between race, class, gender and religion in Gaskell’s fiction, as well as to the ongoing afterlife of her work in fiction, film, web-series, and fanfiction. The Companion is divided into three parts. The first, ‘Texts’, showcases innovative readings of individual works, including well-known and much-studied novels, the biography of Charlotte Brontë, and less-familiar texts such as shorter tales, non-fiction pieces, and letters. The second part, ‘Themes’, features chapters that connect Gaskell’s novels, short fiction, journalism, and life writing in various combinations to present cutting-edge perspectives on the writer’s oeuvre in relation to many cultural and literary concerns including the built environment, material and visual culture, abolition, and the rituals of mourning. The final part, ‘Legacies’, considers the reception of Gaskell’s writings from the late nineteenth century to the present day, addressing their adaptation into multiple forms and media. With its international and comprehensive scope, this volume offers an invaluable resource which attests that Gaskell continues to be a writer worthy of substantial critical attention and signals new directions in Gaskell studies and Victorian studies more widely.

Edinburgh Companion to the Brontes and the Arts

Deborah Wynne, Amber K. Regis

The Bronte family produced and consumed art across a range of media and genres. Haworth Parsonage and the local region proved a crucible of inspiration not only for Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne, but also for their parents. Here were fostered the creative ambitions of four of the nineteenth century's most provocative novelists, poets and visual artists. In turn, the Brontes now sustain heritage, tourism and creative industries that adapt and disseminate their lives and work, their likenesses and words, across the globe: in books, on a plethora of screens (film, TV, computer and phone), in discarnate audio (radio and podcasts) and embodied on stage. The essays collected here offer the first panoramic and sustained examination of the Brontes' lives, work and legacies in relation to the visual, musical, plastic and performing arts, tracing their influences and transformations across the lives and cultural afterlives of this extraordinary literary family.

British Women’s Writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, Volume 3

1880s and 1890s

Adrienne E. Gavin, Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton

This five-volume series, British Women’s Writing From Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840–1940, historically contextualizes and traces developments in women’s fiction from 1840 to 1940. Critically assessing both canonical and lesser-known British women’s writing decade by decade, it redefines the landscape of women’s authorship across a century of dynamic social and cultural change. With each of its volumes devoted to two decades, the series is wide in scope but historically sharply defined. Volume 3: 1880s and 1890s analyses confluences and developments in women’s writing across two fin-de-siècle decades. Its 16 original essays reconsider fiction by canonical and lesser-known women writers, redefining the landscape of female authorship during these decades. By exploring women’s fiction within the social and cultural contexts of the 1880s and 1890s, the collection distils in terms of women’s writing how these decades discretely build on earlier work that is identifiably Victorian. The last two decades of the century, in distinctive ways, witnessed literary experiment, reflection on the limits of realism, and a fruitful sense of confusion about what was ending and what was about to begin.

Wilkie Collins in Context

William Baker, Richard Nemesvari

This collection of essays by international scholars celebrates the 200th anniversary of Wilkie Collins's birth by exploring his unconventional life alongside his works, critical responses to his writings and their afterlife, and the literary and cultural contexts which shaped his fiction. Topics discussed include gender, science and medicine, music, law, race and empire, media adaptations, neo-Victorianism, disability, and ethics. Along with an analysis of his novels, the essays included also recognize the importance of his short stories, journalism, and contributions to Victorian theatre, most notably illuminating the strong connections between sensation fiction and melodrama, as well as exploring his influence on film and TV. Engaging with yet also delving far beyond the famous novels, this volume promotes awareness of Collins' remarkable and diverse writerly achievements and paints a vivid portrait of an author whose fluctuating reputation among contemporary critics stands in stark contrast to his immense and still-enduring popularity.

A Cultural History of Shopping in the Age of Revolution and Empire

Erika Rappaport

This volume examines the development of shopping as a cultural practice in the period 1820 to 1920.