Books

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Literature & Literary Studies

May 2018

The gothic novel in Ireland, c. 1760–1829

by Christina Morin

The gothic novel in Ireland, c. 1760-1829 offers a compelling account of the development of gothic literature in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Ireland. Countering traditional scholarly views of the 'rise' of 'the gothic novel' on the one hand, and, on the other, Irish Romantic literature, this study persuasively re-integrates a body of now overlooked works into the history of the literary gothic as it emerged across Ireland, Britain, and Europe between 1760 and 1829. Its twinned quantitative and qualitative analysis of neglected Irish texts produces a new formal, generic, and ideological map of gothic literary production in this period, persuasively positioning Irish works and authors at the centre of a new critical paradigm with which to understand both Irish Romantic and gothic literary production.

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Promoted Content

Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900

November 2015

That devil's trick

Hypnotism and the Victorian popular imagination

by William Hughes

That devil's trick is the first study of nineteenth-century hypnotism based primarily on the popular - rather than medical - appreciation of the subject. Drawing on the reports of mesmerists, hypnotists, quack doctors and serious physicians printed in popular newspapers from the early years of the nineteenth century to the Victorian fin de siècle, the book provides an insight into how continental mesmerism was first understood in Britain, how a number of distinctively British varieties of mesmerism developed, and how these were continually debated in medical, moral and legal terms. Highly relevant to the study of the many authors - Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Bram Stoker and Conan Doyle among them - whose fiction was informed by the imagery of mesmerism, That devil's trick will be an essential resource for anybody with an interest in the popular and literary culture of the nineteenth century, including literary scholars, medical historians and the general reader.

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Trusted Partner

Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900

November 2015

That devil's trick

Hypnotism and the Victorian popular imagination

by William Hughes

That devil's trick is the first study of nineteenth-century hypnotism based primarily on the popular - rather than medical - appreciation of the subject. Drawing on the reports of mesmerists, hypnotists, quack doctors and serious physicians printed in popular newspapers from the early years of the nineteenth century to the Victorian fin de siècle, the book provides an insight into how continental mesmerism was first understood in Britain, how a number of distinctively British varieties of mesmerism developed, and how these were continually debated in medical, moral and legal terms. Highly relevant to the study of the many authors - Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Bram Stoker and Conan Doyle among them - whose fiction was informed by the imagery of mesmerism, That devil's trick will be an essential resource for anybody with an interest in the popular and literary culture of the nineteenth century, including literary scholars, medical historians and the general reader.

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Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900

November 2015

Discovering Gilgamesh

Geology, narrative and the historical sublime in Victorian culture

by Vybarr Cregan-Reid

In 1872, a young archaeologist at the British Museum made a tremendous discovery. While he was working his way through a Mesopotamian 'slush pile', George Smith, a self-taught expert in ancient languages, happened upon a Babylonian version of Noah's Flood. His research suggested this 'Deluge Tablet' pre-dated the writing of Genesis by a millennium or more. Smith went on to translate what later became The Epic of Gilgamesh, perhaps the oldest and most complete work of literature from any culture. Against the backdrop of innovative readings of a range of paintings, novels, histories and photographs (by figures like Dickens, Eliot, James, Dyce, Turner, Macaulay and Carlyle), this book demonstrates the Gordian complexity of the Victorians' relationship with history, while also seeking to highlight the Epic's role in influencing models of time in late-Victorian geology. Discovering Gilgamesh will be of interest to readers, students and researchers in literary studies, Victorian studies, history, intellectual history, art history and archaeology.

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Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900

November 2015

Discovering Gilgamesh

Geology, narrative and the historical sublime in Victorian culture

by Vybarr Cregan-Reid

In 1872, a young archaeologist at the British Museum made a tremendous discovery. While he was working his way through a Mesopotamian 'slush pile', George Smith, a self-taught expert in ancient languages, happened upon a Babylonian version of Noah's Flood. His research suggested this 'Deluge Tablet' pre-dated the writing of Genesis by a millennium or more. Smith went on to translate what later became The Epic of Gilgamesh, perhaps the oldest and most complete work of literature from any culture. Against the backdrop of innovative readings of a range of paintings, novels, histories and photographs (by figures like Dickens, Eliot, James, Dyce, Turner, Macaulay and Carlyle), this book demonstrates the Gordian complexity of the Victorians' relationship with history, while also seeking to highlight the Epic's role in influencing models of time in late-Victorian geology. Discovering Gilgamesh will be of interest to readers, students and researchers in literary studies, Victorian studies, history, intellectual history, art history and archaeology.

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Trusted Partner

Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900

January 2015

Odd women?

Spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women's fiction, 1850s–1930s

by Emma Liggins

This genealogy of the 'odd woman' compares representations of spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women's fiction and auto/biography from the 1850s to the 1930s. Women outside heterosexual marriage in this period were seen as abnormal, superfluous, incomplete and threatening, yet were also hailed as 'women of the future'. Before 1850 odd women were marginalised, minor characters in British women's fiction, yet by the 1930s spinsters, lesbians and widows had become heroines. This book examines how women writers, including Charlotte Brontë, Elisabeth Gaskell, Ella Hepworth Dixon, May Sinclair, E. H. Young, Radclyffe Hall, Winifred Holtby and Virginia Woolf, challenged dominant perceptions of singleness and lesbianism in their novels, stories and autobiographies. Drawing on advice literature, medical texts and feminist polemic, it demonstrates how these narratives responded to contemporary political controversies around the vote, women's work, sexual inversion and birth control, as well as examining the impact of the First World War.

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Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900

January 2013

Second sight

The visionary imagination in late Victorian literature

by Catherine Maxwell

This challenging and important study, which examines a range of canonical and less well-known writers, is an innovative reassessment of late Victorian literature in its relation to visionary Romanticism. It examines six late Victorian writers - Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Theodore Watts-Dunton and Thomas Hardy - to reveal their commitment to a Romantic visionary tradition which surface towards the end of the nineteenth century in response to the threat of growing materialism. Offering detailed and imaginative readings of both poetry and prose, Second Sight shows the different ways in which late Victorian writers move beyond materiality, without losing a commitment to it, to explore the mysterious relation between the seen and the unseen. A major re-evaluation of the post-Romantic visionary imagination, with implications for our understanding of literary modernism, Second Sight will be required reading for scholars interested in the literature of the late Victorian period.

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Trusted Partner

Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900

January 2013

Second sight

The visionary imagination in late Victorian literature

by Catherine Maxwell

This challenging and important study, which examines a range of canonical and less well-known writers, is an innovative reassessment of late Victorian literature in its relation to visionary Romanticism. It examines six late Victorian writers - Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Theodore Watts-Dunton and Thomas Hardy - to reveal their commitment to a Romantic visionary tradition which surface towards the end of the nineteenth century in response to the threat of growing materialism. Offering detailed and imaginative readings of both poetry and prose, Second Sight shows the different ways in which late Victorian writers move beyond materiality, without losing a commitment to it, to explore the mysterious relation between the seen and the unseen. A major re-evaluation of the post-Romantic visionary imagination, with implications for our understanding of literary modernism, Second Sight will be required reading for scholars interested in the literature of the late Victorian period.

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Trusted Partner

Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900

July 2012

Second sight

The visionary imagination in late Victorian literature

by Catherine Maxwell

This challenging and important study, which examines a range of canonical and less well-known writers, is an innovative reassessment of late Victorian literature in its relation to visionary Romanticism. It examines six late Victorian writers - Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Theodore Watts-Dunton and Thomas Hardy - to reveal their commitment to a Romantic visionary tradition which surfaces towards the end of the nineteenth century in response to the threat of a growing materialism. Offering detailed and imaginative readings of both poetry and prose, Second Sight shows the different ways in which late Victorian writers move beyond materiality, though without losing a commitment to it, to explore the mysterious relation between the seen and the unseen. A major re-evaluation of the post-Romantic visionary imagination, with implications for our understanding of literary modernism, Second Sight will be required reading for scholars interested in the literature of the late Victorian period.

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Trusted Partner

Literature & Literary Studies

March 2016

Carmen de Burgos

Three novellas: Confidencias, La mujer fría and Puñal de claveles

by Catherine Davies, Abigail Lee Six

Carmen de Burgos (1867-1932), an influential journalist, socio-political activist, and a key literary figure in the cultural ferment of pre-war Madrid, is currently being rediscovered, having languished in a long and regrettable oblivion during the Franco years. This scholarly edition of three stories by de Burgos includes the unabridged texts, vocabulary, notes, chronology, bibliography, 'temas de debate y discusión', and a critical introduction. Confidencias is the fictional diary of a young woman, describing her first adulterous relationship and exploiting the narratological possibilities of the diary form. La mujer fría is a vampire story featuring perhaps the very first pitiable vampire, or at least one of the earliest examples of this type, whilst ingeniously maintaining undecidability as to whether the protagonist is supernatural. Puñal de claveles narrates a wedding-day elopement. Inspired by the real-life 'Crimen de Níjar', Lorca drew on both stories for his Bodas de sangre. ;

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Literature & Literary Studies

July 2016

Sinister histories

Gothic novels and representations of the past, from Horace Walpole to Mary Wollstonecraft

by Jonathan Dent

Sinister histories is the first book to offer a detailed exploration of the Gothic's response to Enlightenment historiography. It uncovers hitherto-neglected relationships between fiction and prominent works of eighteenth-century history, locating the Gothic novel in a range of new interdisciplinary contexts. Drawing on ideas from literary studies, history, politics and philosophy, the book demonstrates the extent to which historical works influenced and shaped Gothic fiction from the 1760s to the early nineteenth century. Through a series of detailed readings of texts from The Castle of Otranto (1764) to Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman (1798), this book offers an alternative account of the Gothic's development and a sustained revaluation of the creative legacies of the French Revolution. ;

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Trusted Partner

Literature & Literary Studies

April 2016

Carmen de Burgos

Three novellas: Confidencias, La mujer fría and Puñal de claveles

by Catherine Davies, Abigail Lee Six

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Trusted Partner

Literature & Literary Studies

December 2017

Creating character

Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction

by Helena Ifill, Andrew Smith, Anna Barton

This book explores the ways in which the two leading sensation authors of the 1860s, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, engaged with nineteenth-century ideas about how the personality is formed and the extent to which it can be influenced either by the subject or by others. Innovative readings of Braddon's and Collins's sensation novels explore how they reflect Victorian theories of heredity, degeneration, inherent constitution, education, upbringing and social circumstance. Far from presenting a reductive depiction of 'nature' versus 'nurture', Braddon and Collins show the creation of character to be a complex interplay of internal and external factors. Drawing on material from a variety of genres, Creating character shows how sensation authors situated themselves at the intersections of established and developing, conservative and radical, learned and sensationalist thought about how the personality could be made and modified.

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Trusted Partner

Literature & Literary Studies

December 2017

Creating character

Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction

by Helena Ifill, Andrew Smith, Anna Barton

This book explores the ways in which the two leading sensation authors of the 1860s, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, engaged with nineteenth-century ideas about how the personality is formed and the extent to which it can be influenced either by the subject or by others. Innovative readings of Braddon's and Collins's sensation novels explore how they reflect Victorian theories of heredity, degeneration, inherent constitution, education, upbringing and social circumstance. Far from presenting a reductive depiction of 'nature' versus 'nurture', Braddon and Collins show the creation of character to be a complex interplay of internal and external factors. Drawing on material from a variety of genres, Creating character shows how sensation authors situated themselves at the intersections of established and developing, conservative and radical, learned and sensationalist thought about how the personality could be made and modified.

More
Trusted Partner

Literature & Literary Studies

December 2017

Creating character

Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction

by Helena Ifill, Andrew Smith, Anna Barton

This book explores the ways in which the two leading sensation authors of the 1860s, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, engaged with nineteenth-century ideas about how the personality is formed and the extent to which it can be influenced either by the subject or by others. Innovative readings of Braddon's and Collins's sensation novels explore how they reflect Victorian theories of heredity, degeneration, inherent constitution, education, upbringing and social circumstance. Far from presenting a reductive depiction of 'nature' versus 'nurture', Braddon and Collins show the creation of character to be a complex interplay of internal and external factors. Drawing on material from a variety of genres, Creating character shows how sensation authors situated themselves at the intersections of established and developing, conservative and radical, learned and sensationalist thought about how the personality could be made and modified.

More
Trusted Partner

Literature & Literary Studies

January 2017

Sinister histories

Gothic novels and representations of the past, from Horace Walpole to Mary Wollstonecraft

by Jonathan Dent

Sinister histories is the first book to offer a detailed exploration of the Gothic's response to Enlightenment historiography. It uncovers hitherto-neglected relationships between fiction and prominent works of eighteenth-century history, locating the Gothic novel in a range of new interdisciplinary contexts. Drawing on ideas from literary studies, history, politics and philosophy, the book demonstrates the extent to which historical works influenced and shaped Gothic fiction from the 1760s to the early nineteenth century. Through a series of detailed readings of texts from The Castle of Otranto (1764) to Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman (1798), this book offers an alternative account of the Gothic's development and a sustained revaluation of the creative legacies of the French Revolution.

More
Trusted Partner

Literature & Literary Studies

July 2014

Odd women?

Spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women's fiction, 1850s–1930s

by Emma Liggins

This genealogy of the 'odd woman' compares representations of spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women's fiction and auto/biography from the 1850s to the 1930s. Women outside heterosexual marriage in this period were seen as abnormal, superfluous, incomplete and threatening, yet were also hailed as 'women of the future'. Before 1850 odd women were marginalised, minor characters in British women's fiction, yet by the 1930s spinsters, lesbians and widows had become heroines. This book examines how women writers, including Charlotte Brontë, Elisabeth Gaskell, Ella Hepworth Dixon, May Sinclair, E. H. Young, Radclyffe Hall, Winifred Holtby and Virginia Woolf, challenged dominant perceptions of singleness and lesbianism in their novels, stories and autobiographies. Drawing on advice literature, medical texts and feminist polemic, it demonstrates how these narratives responded to contemporary political controversies around the vote, women's work, sexual inversion and birth control, as well as examining the impact of the First World War.

More
Trusted Partner

Biography & True Stories

July 2017

Charlotte Brontë

Legacies and afterlives

by Amber Regis, Deborah Wynne

Charlotte Brontë: legacies and afterlives is a timely reflection on the persistent fascination and creative engagement with Charlotte Brontë's life and work. The new essays in this volume, which cover the period from Brontë's first publication to the twenty-first century, explain why her work has endured in so many different forms and contexts. This book brings the story of Charlotte Brontë's legacy up to date, analysing the intriguing afterlives of characters such as Jane Eyre and Rochester in neo-Victorian fiction, cinema, television, the stage and, more recently, on the web. Taking a fresh look at 150 years of engagement with one of the best-loved novelists of the Victorian period, from obituaries to vlogs, from stage to screen, from novels to erotic makeovers, this book reveals the author's diverse and intriguing legacy. Engagingly written and illustrated, the book will appeal to both scholars and general readers.

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Trusted Partner

Biography & True Stories

July 2017

Charlotte Brontë

Legacies and afterlives

by Amber Regis, Deborah Wynne

Charlotte Brontë: legacies and afterlives is a timely reflection on the persistent fascination and creative engagement with Charlotte Brontë's life and work. The new essays in this volume, which cover the period from Brontë's first publication to the twenty-first century, explain why her work has endured in so many different forms and contexts. This book brings the story of Charlotte Brontë's legacy up to date, analysing the intriguing afterlives of characters such as Jane Eyre and Rochester in neo-Victorian fiction, cinema, television, the stage and, more recently, on the web. Taking a fresh look at 150 years of engagement with one of the best-loved novelists of the Victorian period, from obituaries to vlogs, from stage to screen, from novels to erotic makeovers, this book reveals the author's diverse and intriguing legacy. Engagingly written and illustrated, the book will appeal to both scholars and general readers.

More
Trusted Partner

Biography & True Stories

July 2017

Charlotte Brontë

Legacies and afterlives

by Amber Regis, Deborah Wynne

Charlotte Brontë: legacies and afterlives is a timely reflection on the persistent fascination and creative engagement with Charlotte Brontë's life and work. The new essays in this volume, which cover the period from Brontë's first publication to the twenty-first century, explain why her work has endured in so many different forms and contexts. This book brings the story of Charlotte Brontë's legacy up to date, analysing the intriguing afterlives of characters such as Jane Eyre and Rochester in neo-Victorian fiction, cinema, television, the stage and, more recently, on the web. Taking a fresh look at 150 years of engagement with one of the best-loved novelists of the Victorian period, from obituaries to vlogs, from stage to screen, from novels to erotic makeovers, this book reveals the author's diverse and intriguing legacy. Engagingly written and illustrated, the book will appeal to both scholars and general readers.

More

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by Christina Morin

Hypnotism and the Victorian popular imagination

by William Hughes

Hypnotism and the Victorian popular imagination

by William Hughes

Geology, narrative and the historical sublime in Victorian culture

by Vybarr Cregan-Reid

Geology, narrative and the historical sublime in Victorian culture

by Vybarr Cregan-Reid

Spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women's fiction, 1850s–1930s

by Emma Liggins

The visionary imagination in late Victorian literature

by Catherine Maxwell

The visionary imagination in late Victorian literature

by Catherine Maxwell

The visionary imagination in late Victorian literature

by Catherine Maxwell

Three novellas: Confidencias, La mujer fría and Puñal de claveles

by Catherine Davies, Abigail Lee Six

Gothic novels and representations of the past, from Horace Walpole to Mary Wollstonecraft

by Jonathan Dent

Three novellas: Confidencias, La mujer fría and Puñal de claveles

by Catherine Davies, Abigail Lee Six

Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction

by Helena Ifill, Andrew Smith, Anna Barton

Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction

by Helena Ifill, Andrew Smith, Anna Barton

Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction

by Helena Ifill, Andrew Smith, Anna Barton

Gothic novels and representations of the past, from Horace Walpole to Mary Wollstonecraft

by Jonathan Dent

Spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women's fiction, 1850s–1930s

by Emma Liggins

Legacies and afterlives

by Amber Regis, Deborah Wynne

Legacies and afterlives

by Amber Regis, Deborah Wynne

Legacies and afterlives

by Amber Regis, Deborah Wynne

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