The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture
Edited by Juliet John
Abstract
The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture is a major contribution to the dynamic field of Victorian studies. This collection of 37 original chapters by leading international Victorian scholars offers new approaches to familiar themes (for example, science, religion, gender) and gives space to newer and emerging topics (for instance, old age, fair play, economics). Structured around three broad sections (on ‘Ways of Being: Identity and Ideology’, ‘Ways of Understanding: Knowledge and Belief’, and ‘Ways of Communicating: Print and Other Cultures’), the volume is sub-divided into 9 sub-sections each with its own ‘lead’ essay: on subjectivity, politics, gender and sexuality, place and race, religion, science, material and mass culture, aesthetics and visual culture, and theatrical culture. The collection, like today’s Victorian studies, is thoroughly interdisciplinary and yet its substantial Introduction explores a concern which is evident both implicitly and explicitly in the volume’s essays: that is, the nature and status of ‘literary’ culture and the literary from the Victorian period to the present. The diverse and wide-ranging essays present original scholarship framed accessibly for a mixed readership of advanced undergraduates, graduate students and established scholars.
Keywords:
literary culture,
subjectivity,
politics,
gender,
place,
religion,
science,
material culture,
aesthetics,
theatre
Bibliographic Information
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Print Publication Date:
- Jul 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199593736
- Published online:
- Jun 2014
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199593736.001.0001
Editor
Juliet John,
editor
Juliet John is Hildred Carlile Chair of English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London and Head of the Department of English. She has published widely on Victorian literature and culture. Her books include Dickens and Mass Culture (Oxford University Press, 2010; paperback 2013), Dickens’s Villains: Melodrama, Character, Popular Culture (Oxford University Press, 2001; paperback 2003), and The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture (Oxford University Press, 2016). She is Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies: Victorian Literature.
