Victorian Fiction (Paperback - 2002)

The books in the Contexts series provide broad-ranging and accessible information about the literary, historical and cultural background of the major periods and genres. Taking its instigation from the ways in which literary texts define their own area of reference within their historical moment, each volume also questions canonical readings of its period, and contains relevant extracts from contemporary documents to aid further discussion.
Victorian Fiction offers the reader an insight into the cultural, political, and social contexts in which the major Victorian novels were written and read. Moving from the early works of Dickens in the 1830s, to the novels of Thomas Hardy and the New Women at the end of the century, the book gives an overview of the developments of fiction as a genre, and offers readers a way of understanding the relationship between the Victorian novel and its historical contexts.
About the Author

Dr Gail Marshall is Reader in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Oxford Brookes University, UK