The private rod

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Gesa Stedman

"In this new study, Gesa Stedman mines the vein of emotion in Victorian writing to unearth new insights into the ways literature responded to the dramatic social and political changes then taking place." "Through an examination of the history of key Victorian emotion words, the major topics that dominate the discourses on emotions in this era, and the central fictional and non-fictional 'paradigm scenarios' which constitute these discourses, Stedman shows how slowly written representatives of the 'passions' change in the 19th century. She argues that in texts about feelings, Victorian authors seem to attempt to delay or halt on a discursive level what can no longer be stopped on any other level of their culture and society." "Reading fictional texts alongside non-fictional works, this study highlights the tensions between the need of 19th-century writers to control 'storms of passion' and their effects, and their need to express feelings. Contemporary research from various disciplines such as sociology, ethnology and history inform this study, which juxtaposes canonical material such as Dicken's Hard Times, Charlotte Bronte's Shirley and Germaine de Stael's Corinne with popular novels and non-fictional texts such as The Education of the Heart, by Sarah Ellis, and Darwin's The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals. The analysis deals with emotions applying to both genders, but includes a special section examining the representation of emotion in relation to women." "Stemming the Torrent provides new insights into the literature of the period, and brings to light important new material for the scholars interested in the philosophy and psychology of emotions."--Jacket.

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Angelique Richardson

"Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century recontextualizes New Woman writers, demonstrating that they were as concerned with the questions of poverty, sickness, and health as they were with the changing role of women, the issue for which they are currently generally known and celebrated. Focusing on fiction and the press, and drawing on the papers and published work of Galton and other eugenists, Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century reveals the cultural pervasiveness of eugenics and explores, for the first time, the intimate relations between early feminism and eugenics, making a radical contribution to nineteenth-century studies."--Jacket.

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John Sutherland

In Is Heathcliff a Murderer? (well, is he?) John Sutherland investigates thirty-four conundrums of nineteenth-century fiction. Applying these 'real world' questions to fiction is not in any sense intended to catch out the novelists who are invariably cleverer than their most defectively inclined readers. Typically, one finds a reason for the seeming anomaly. Not blunders, that is, but unexpected felicities and ingenious justifications. In Is Heathcliff a Murderer? John Sutherland, recently described by Tony Tanner as 'a sort of Sherlock Holmes of literature', pays homage to the most rewarding of critical activities, close reading and the pleasures of good-natured pedantry.

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Jonathan H. Grossman

"In The Art of Alibi, Jonathan H. Grossman reconstructs the relation of the novel to nineteenth-century law courts. During the Romantic era, courthouses and trial scenes frequently found their way into the plots of English novels. As Grossman states, "by the Victorian period, theses scenes represented a powerful intersection of narrative form with a complementary and competing structure for storytelling." He argues that the courts, newly fashioned as a site in which to orchestrate voices and reconstruct stories, arose as a cultural presence influencing the shape of the English novel.". "Weaving examinations of novels such as William Godwin's Caleb Williams, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Charles Dicknens's The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, along with a reading of the new Royal Courts of Justice, Grossman charts the exciting changes occurring within the novel, especially crime fiction, that preceded and led to the invention of the detective mystery in the 1840s."--BOOK JACKET.