Victorian Identities: Social and Cultural Formations in Nineteenth-Century Literature

by Ruth Robbins (Editor)

The Victorian period was one of enormous cultural diversity with places for figures as different as Alfred Tennyson and Oscar Wilde. Victorian Identities simultaneously celebrates that diversity whilst drawing out the connections between disparate voices. With essays on the 'Greats' of the period - Dickens, Tennyson, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins and Wilde - as well as on the less well-known sensation writer, Rhoda Broughton, and on the formation of children's voices in Victorian literature - the collection rejects narrow definitions of the period and its values, and exposes its texts to readings informed by contemporary literary theory.

269 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1995

About the author

Ruth Robbins is Professor of English Literature and head of the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities. Her work has focused on the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, on autobiography, on literary theory and on particular writers such as Oscar Wilde and Arnold Bennett.

Ruth's research interests centre on the late-Victorian period in English literature, especially the literature of Decadence, and include the writings of Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons and Vernon Lee - her book Pater to Forster, 1873-1924 (2003) deals with literature written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century period. Her recent book Oscar Wilde (2011) revisits her interests in the fin de siècle; additionally she is co-author of a book on the British Short Story (with Emma Liggins and Andrew Maunder, 2010).

She also has research interests in literary theory