A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture

Thirty leading Victorianists from around the world collaborate here in a multidimensional analysis of the breadth and sweep of modern Britain's longest, unruliest literary epoch.

Introduction x

Notes on Contributors xiv

Part One History in Focus

1 1832 3
Lawrence Poston

2 1848 19
Antony H. Harrison

3 1870 35
Linda K. Hughes

4 1897 51
Stephen Arata

Part Two Passages of Life

5 Growing Up: Childhood 69
Claudia Nelson

6 Moving Out: Adolescence 82
Chris R. Vanden Bossche

7 Growing Old: Age 97
Teresa Mangum

8 Passing On: Death 110
Gerhard Joseph and Herbert F. Tucker

9 Victorian Sexualities 125
James Eli Adams Copyrighted Material

Part Three Walks of Life

10 Clerical 141
Christine L. Krueger

11 Legal 155
Simon Petch

12 Medical 170
Lawrence Rothfield

13 Military 183
John R. Reed

14 Educational 194
Thomas William Heyck

15 Administrative 212
Robert Newsom

16 Financial 225
Christina Crosby

17 Industrial 244
Herbert Sussman

18 Commercial 258
Jennifer Wicke

19 Spectacle 276
Joss Marsh

20 Publishing 289
Richard D. Altick

Part Four Kinds of Writing

21 Poetry 307
E. Warwick Slinn

22 Fiction 323
Hilary Schor

23 Drama 339
Alan Fischler

24 Life Writing 356
Timothy Peltason

25 Sage Writing 373
Linda H. Peterson
Notes Contents Contributors ix

26 Literary Criticism 388
David E. Latané, Jr

Part Five Borders

27 Under Victorian Skins: The Bodies Beneath 407
Helena Michie

28 On the Parapets of Privacy 425
Karen Chase and Michael Levenson

29 “Then on the Shore of the Wide World”: The Victorian Nation and its Others 438
James Buzard

General Subject Index 456

Index of Victorian Works 481

"Each of the very varied contributions - there are 29 of them in all - is well equipped with exhaustive and up-to-date bibliographies, invaluable for further studies. There is also an excellent index. Altogether, therefore, this is an admirable and enduring book, which should certainly be added to the reference departments of all self-respecting university libraries - and a great many civic and municipal libraries, as well." Languages and Literature

"This book has been planned to meet both short-term and long-range needs. It is a reference work for consultation. " The Victorian Newsletter

"...Tucker's Companion, with its extensive range of topics (some truly original and rarely dealt with in similar books), its well-documented essays, and constant degree of serious scholarship, apears indeed as an extremely valuable tool for students and scholars alike, and a major contribution to Victorian criticism." The Journal of the South Central Modern Language Association

Herbert F. Tucker is Professor of English at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, where he is also Associate Editor of New Literary History. His previous publications include Browning's Beginnings: The Art of Disclosure (1980), Tennyson and the Doom of Romanticism (1988) and Critical Essays on Alfred Lord Tennyson (1993). Thirty leading Victorianists from around the world collaborate here in a multidimensional analysis of the breadth and sweep of modern Britain's longest, unruliest literary epoch.

Four initial chapters of historical overview focus on climactic years (1832, 1848, 1870, 1897) in which accumulated forces for change precipitated new Victorian directions. Four chapters from Part II examine in childhood, adolescence, aging, and death the chief phases of an individual life and their literary representations, while a fifth considers how pervasively Victorian lives were influenced by sexuality.

Part III expands the midmost life phase, working adulthood, to survey prominent Victorian careers, with chapters on religion, medicine, education, law, bureaucracy, the military, banking, industry, commerce, spectacle and publishing. While each chapter of the Companion highlights literary aspects of its topic, literature as such takes centre stage in Part IV, which comprises separate chapters on the genres of poetry, fiction, sage writing, life writing, drama, and literary criticism. The book concludes with three essays that investigate Victorians' conception of their world as defined by the maintenance and transgression of borders: between body and environment, home and street, nation and globe.

This integrated design lets the Companion combine inclusiveness with convenience. Its topical spectrum, precision of focus, and accessible style keep the book available for ready consultation, while an index and network of cross-references encourage further study. At the same time, when read sequentially the book renders a textured and polyphonic image, by diverse hands exemplifying diverse standpoints, of the Victorian imagination: a manifold cultural force that notoriously eludes neat summary, yet bequeathed to our own day a recognizable tradition with which we are destined to struggle - as scholars, as modern people - for some time to come.