The Nineteenth-Century Novel: Realisms

by Delia da Sousa Correa (Editor)

The essays in this volume trace the experimentation of nineteenth-century writers in advancing new modes of realist fiction while revitalizing the inheritance of the Gothic and the Romantic.
Focusing on some of the most popular novels of the century ( Northanger Abbey , Jayne Eyre , Dombey and Son , Middlemarch , Far from the Madding Crowd and Germinal ), this attractive volume explores some of the recurring themes in nineteenth-century fiction:
aspiration and vocation; social class; sexual politics; political reform; colonialism and commerce.
This is an ideal introduction to some of the major fictional achievements of the first industrial era, and to most of the crucial themes in nineteenth-century fiction.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Literature

320 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2000

Reviews

[Graham]

The first set book in an old Open University Level 3 literature course I studied. This is fascinating stuff: high-level literary criticism which at the same time studies the development of the novel and various genres within it. The brunt of the text consists of close textual analysis of a diverse handful of books, from Dickens to Zola and some important figures inbetween; the chapters on Hardy I think are particularly illuminating. These are interspersed with background chapters looking at the novel's general development and setting in mid-Victorian Britain. Although it can make for pretty heavy reading at times, it's never less than engaging, thanks to being written with a deft touch.

[Laura]

There are some chapters which are really interesting and very helpful when studying the novels discussed. However there are others that I found very difficult to manage & offered little assistance

[Richard Cubitt]

Read for my degree.