Review 19: Books Announced
 

NBOL-19 Books Announced


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American Literature AL

Drama DR

Literature and Childhood CH

Literature and Language LL

Literature and Politics LP

Literature and Religion LR

Literature and Science LS

Literature and Sex LSX

Literature and Visual Art LVA

Queer Studies QS

Romantic Era Fiction REF

Romantic Era Prose REPR

Romantic Poetry RPO

Victorian Fiction VF

Victorian Poetry VPO

Victorian Studies VS

Women Writers WW



ARTESE, BRIAN
TESTIMONY ON TRIAL: CONRAD, JAMES, AND THE CONTEST FOR MODERNISM (Toronto, January 2012) 208 pp. -AL-VF-

Who is a more authoritative source of information -- an eyewitness or a more "impartial" authority? This book examines the conflicts over testimony through the eyes of two of its major combatants, Joseph Conrad and Henry James. Brian Artese finds an overlooked yet direct inspiration for Heart of Darkness in the anti--testimonial scheming of Henry Morton Stanley and the New York Herald. Through new readings of works including Lord Jim and The Portrait of a Lady, Artese demonstrates how the cultural conditions that worked against testimony fed into a nascent conflict about the meaning of modernism itself.
To be reviewed by Joyce Wexler.





AZZARELLO, ROBERT
QUEER ENVIRONMENTALITY: ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND SEXUALITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE (Ashgate, May 2012) -AL-QS-

Challenging the idea that environmental literature dramatizes heterosexual teleology, Azzarello shows how environmentalism turns queer in the works of Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Willa Cather, and Djuna Barnes.
To be reviewed by Laura Zebuhr.





BANNET, EVE TAVOR AND SUSAN MANNING, EDS.
TRANSATLANTIC LITERARY STUDIES, 1660-1830 (Cambridge, 31 December 2011) -AL-LL-

In a set of original essays on transatlantic literary exchanges from 1660 to 1830, this book offers both a state-of-the-art report on existing scholarship and a preview of future prospects in this field.
To be reviewed by Winfried Fluck.





BATES, BRIAN R.
WORDSWORTH'S POETIC COLLECTIONS, SUPPLEMENTARY WRITING AND PARODIC RECEPTION (Pickering & Chatto/ Ashgate, June 2012) 256 pp. -RPO-

Wordsworth's process of revision, his organization of poetic volumes and his supplementary writings are often seen as distinct from his poetic composition. Bates asserts that an analysis of these supplementary writings and paratexts are necessary to a full understanding of Wordsworth's poetry. He examines Wordsworth's career between 1800 and 1820 to reveal how supplementary prose, promotion and parody were intertwined with debates on the creation of reading publics, the role of the press and the enduring literary character of England.
To be reviewed by Leslie Brisman.





BAUER, DALE, ED.
THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF AMERICAN WOMEN'S LITERATURE (Cambridge, 31 May 2012) -AL-WW-

This collaborative history develops historical, cultural, theoretical, and even polemical methods of examining the literature created by American women.
Beside the editor, contributors include Philip Gould, Rosemarie Zagarri, Dana Nelson, Stephanie Smith, Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola, Elizabeth Petrino, Shirley Samuels, Susan Griffin, Priscilla Wald, Frederika Teute, Gail Smith, Yolanda Pierce, Lisa Long, Sandra Zagarell, Jasmine Griffin, and Mary Kelley.
To be reviewed by Nina Baym.





BENDIXEN, ALFRED, ED.
A COMPANION TO THE AMERICAN NOVEL (Wiley-Blackwell, April 2012) -AL-

Charting the development of the American novel from 1780 to the present day, leading scholars highlight the interaction of cultural forces and aesthetic principles. After considering a broad range of categories including the Gothic, science fiction, and detective writing, they examine key works ranging from The Scarlet Letter to Beloved.






BLOOM, ABIGAIL BURNHAM AND MARY SANDERS POLLOCK, EDS.
VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND FILM ADAPTATION (Cambria, November, 2011), pp. 280 -LVA-VF-

Working with a body of literature present at the very creation of film, this book builds on major film theory and also on critical and theoretical work specifically about Victorian film and television adaptations. It probes adaptations of drama, short stories, and poetry as well as novels and lesser known works of the Victorian period, and it studies the work of directors such as Ernst Lubitsch, Stanley Kubrick, Atom Egoyan, and Francis Ford Coppola. Besides the editors, contributors are Thomas Leitch, Jean-Marie Lecomte, Natalie Neill, Gene M. Moore, Michael Eberle-Sinatra, Louise McDonald, Ellen Moody, Sarah J. Heidt, Laura Carroll, Christopher Palmer, Sue Thomas, and Rebecca Waese.
To be reviewed by Kamilla Elliott.





BOLD, CHRISTINE, ED.
THE OXFORD HISTORY OF POPULAR PRINT CULTURE, VOL. 6: US POPULAR PRINT CULTURE 1860-1920 (Oxford, June 2011) -AL-

In this sixth of a nine-volume series on print culture in English from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the present, thirty contributors explore a cornucopia of US popular print materials during the sixty years in which mass culture captivated large swathes of the population. Topics include history of the book, advertising leaflets, postcards, newspapers, magazines, dime novels, and the technologies of production and distribution. While surveying authors both famous and forgotten and while crossing boundaries between high and low culture, the essayists assess the power of 'the popular' in its many meanings--widely circulated, commercialized, vernacular, working-class, cheap, and accessible.
To be reviewed by Stephanie Foote.





BROWN, DANIEL
THE POETRY OF VICTORIAN SCIENTISTS (Cambridge, October 2012) -LS-VPO-

In this first sustained study of the poetry written by Victorian scientists, Daniel Brown shows the mutual influence of scientific concerns with language, and mathematical notation, on the one hand, and the playful principles of poetry -- especially nonsense poetry -- on the other.
To be reviewed by John Holmes.





BROWN, IAN, ED.
LITERARY TOURISM, THE TROSSACHS AND WALTER SCOTT (Scottish Literature International, 2012) 176 pp. -

Recalling the international impact of Scott's epic poem The Lady of the Lake (1810), which captivatingly portrayed the wild romantic landscape around Loch Katrine and the Trossachs, eleven essays discuss tourism in the Trossachs both before and after 1810, survey the indigenous Gaelic culture of the area, consider Scott's response to the landscape, history and literature of the region, and trace his impact on the tourists, authors and artists who thronged in his wake. Besides the editor, contributors include Tom Furniss, Alastair Dune, Nicola Watson, Jim Alison, David Hewitt, Michael Newton, Dorothy McMillan, Murdo MacDonald, Ian Thompson, and David Manderson.






BULLEN, J.B.
ROSSETTI: PAINTER AND POET (Frances Lincoln, 2011) -LVA-VPO-

In this first interdisciplinary account of a man who inspired both the first pre-Raphaelite generation of 1849 and the second generation ten years later, Bullen tracks the development of his painting and poetry within the context of his highly dramatic life. By turns sensual and spiritual, Dante Gabriel Rossetti sought to transcend the Manichean division of body and soul even as he struggled with the contradictions of sexuality, projecting onto women his anxieties, pleasures, and needs.
To be reviewed by Elizabeth Helsinger.





BURWICK, FREDERICK AND PAUL DOUGLASS, EDS.
DANTE AND ITALY IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM (Palgrave, August 16, 2011) -REPR-RPO-

From the artistic practice of improvisation to the politics of nationalism, contributors to this volume examine the relations between British and Italian culture.
To be reviewed by Stuart Peterfreund.





BURWICK, FREDERICK
PLAYING TO THE CROWD (Palgrave, 22 November 2011) -DR-

Between 1780 and 1830, the growing London population divided into immigrant neighborhoods with two dozen unlicensed theatres tailoring productions to attract and serve this new audience. Examining the productions of these minor theatres, Burwick shows how they were adapted for local patrons and for the audiences who worked and lived in these communities.
To be reviewed by Heidi Holder.





CASTRONOVO, RUSS, ED.
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE (Oxford, January 2012) -AL-

In assessing the literature of nineteenth-century America, this book offers practical insights and proactive strategies for exploring novels, poems, and other literary creations.
To be reviewed by Randall Fuller.





CAULFIELD, JAMES WALTER
OVERCOMING MATTHEW ARNOLD: ETHICS IN CULTURE AND CRITICISM (Ashgate, June 2012) -VS-

Opening the way for a reexamination of Matthew Arnold's contributions to ethical criticism, James Walter Caufield emphasizes the central role of philosophical pessimism in Arnold's master tropes of 'culture' and 'conduct.' He argues that Arnoldian conduct is grounded in an ethic of 'renouncement' that wholly informs both his poetry and prose and has continuing relevance to much contemporary ethical criticism.
To be reviewed by Lawrence Poston.





CHRISTENSEN, LENA
EDITING EMILY DICKINSON: THE PRODUCTION OF AN AUTHOR Studies in Major Authors (Routledge, May 2012) -AL-WW-

This book shows how Dickinson's work has been edited in the twentieth century and how such editorial processes help to produce her as an author. The posthumous editing of her handwritten manuscripts into the conventions of the book and the electronic archive, Christensen argues, reflects her editors' assumptions about the literary work, and specifically about what a Dickinson poem may be or how we may approach such an object.
To be reviewed by Sally Bushell.





COCKIN, KATHARINE
THE COLLECTED LETTERS OF ELLEN TERRY, VOLUME 2 (Pickering & Chatto, February 2011), 232 pp.; Volume 3 (Pickering & Chatto, April 2012) 304 pp. -DR-VS-WW-

Ellen Terry's correspondence was both exuberant and extensive. Her remaining letters provide a fascinating insight into the dynamics of the Victorian theatre, and the difficulties of life for a woman maintaining a successful public persona whilst raising two illegitimate children.
To be reviewed by Carol Simpson Stern.





COPELAND, EDWARD
THE SILVER FORK NOVEL: FASHIONABLE FICTION IN THE AGE OF REFORM (Cambridge, September 2012) -REF-

Examining fiction that seems simply to celebrate the glamor of aristocratic life and that has been largely sidelined by literary history, this first modern full-length study of silver-fork novels argues that they were tools of persuasion meant to show the British middle classes how they might ally themselves with an aristocratic program of political reform
To be reviewed by Maria Bachman.





COTKIN, GEORGE
DIVE DEEPER: JOURNEYS WITH MOBY-DICK (Oxford, August 2012) -AL-

This guide to Melville's epic American novel includes 135 brief chapters along with comments on its Etymology, Extracts, and Epilogue. Each of the chapters in the guide is keyed to a phrase, issue, image, sensibility or notion in the corresponding chapter of the original.
To be reviewed by David Dowling.





COUSTILLAS, PIERRE
THE HEROIC LIFE OF GEORGE GISSING, PART II (Pickering & Chatto/ Ashgate, January 2012) 500 pp. -VS-

In Part II of this exhaustively researched 3-volume biography, Coustillas examines the period of Gissing's greatest authorial triumphs, including The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women(1893). Coustillas also covers Gissing's three trips to Italy (from 1888 to 1897), his marriage to Edith Underwood in 1891, and the central themes of his writing in these years: the situation of women and the commercialization of literature, which he believed should be made for the cultural intelligentsia rather than marketed to the undiscriminating public.
To be reviewed by Robert Selig.





COUSTILLAS, PIERRE
THE HEROIC LIFE OF GEORGE GISSING, PART III (Pickering & Chatto/ Ashgate, July 2012) 500 pp. -VS-

Though the last years of Gissing's life saw the breakup of his second marriage and the breakdown of his health (emphysema drove him move abroad), his literary reputation soared and he formed new friendships with writers such as Henry James and H G Wells. His books from this period include Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1898); By the Ionian Sea (1901) about his "rambles" in Calabria; and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), the most autobiographical of his works as well as the last of his books to be published before his death-- in France--on 28 December 1903.
To be reviewed by Robert Selig.





CRONIN, RICHARD
READING VICTORIAN POETRY (Wiley-Blackwell, January 2012) -VPO-

Including both canonical and lesser known writers, this volume of close readings embraces the breadth and diversity of poetry from the Victorian era.
To be reviewed by Linda Hughes.





DAMROSCH, DETTMAR, SUSAN WOLFSON AND PETER MANNING, EDS.
THE LONGMAN ANTHOLOGY OF BRITISH LITERATURE, VOLUME 2A: THE ROMANTICS AND THEIR CONTEMPORARIES, 5TH ED. (Pearson/ Longman, September 2011) -REPR-RPO-

This new edition offers up-to-date introductions and notes written by an editorial team whose members are all actively engaged in teaching and in current scholarship, and more than 50 illustrations show both artistic and cultural developments from the medieval period to the present. New works include selections from William Wordsworth's The Excursion, Mary Wollstonecraft's The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria, and Byron's Don Juan.






DAWSON, GOWAN AND BERNARD LIGHTMAN, EDS.
VICTORIAN SCIENCE AND LITERATURE PART I, 4 vols. (Pickering & Chatto/ Ashgate, 2011), 1504 pp. -LS-VS-

This eight-volume, reset edition in two parts collects rare primary sources on Victorian science, literature and culture. The sources cover both scientific writing that has an aesthetic component -- what might be called "the literature of science" -- and more overtly literary texts that deal with scientific matters.
To be reviewed by Christine Ferguson.





DICKENS, CHARLES
SKETCHES OF YOUNG GENTLEMEN AND YOUNG COUPLES: WITH SKETCHES OF YOUNG LADIES BY EDWARD CASWALL (Oxford, March 2012) -LVA-VF-

Exemplifying "young Dickens at his most playful," this volume showcases two collections of little-known sketches by Dickens that are illustrated by Phiz. Whimsical, satirical, witty and exuberant, the sketches ridicule the behavior of their subjects with perfect comic effect, offering fascinating evidence of a writer learning his craft and refining his style.
To be reviewed by Alison Byerly.





DICKEY, FRANCES
THE MODERN PORTRAIT POEM: FROM DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI TO EZRA POUND (Virginia, June 2012) -LVA-VS-

Combining literary and art history as well as crossing the Atlantic and the line between Victorian and modern, Dickey shows how Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Swinburne, and J.M. Whistler transformed the genre of portraiture in both painting and poetry and then influenced such American poets as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, and E.E. Cummings.
To be reviewed by Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux.





DOUGLAS-FAIRHURST, ROBERT
BECOMING DICKENS: THE INVENTION OF A NOVELIST (Harvard, October 2011) 400 pp. -

In following the twists and turns of Charles Dickens's early career, this new biography examines a remarkable double transformation: Dickens reinvented both himself and the form of the novel. Before committing himself to novel-writing, he tried the law and journalism, considered acting, and even thought of emigrating to the West Indies. Yet with The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and a groundbreaking series of plays, sketches, and articles, he succeeded in turning every potential breakdown into a breakthrough. Focused on the 1830s, this book portrays a restless and uncertain Dickens who could not decide on the career path he should take and would never feel secure in his considerable achievements.
To be reviewed by Deirdre David.





ENGEL, WILLIAM E.
EARLY MODERN POETICS IN MELVILLE AND POE: MEMORY, MELANCHOLY, AND THE EMBLEMATIC TRADITION (Ashgate, April 2012) -AL-

To show how close reading of seventeenth-century texts influenced the compositional practices of Melville and Poe, and to illustrate their profound debt to the past, Engel examines the overlapping rhetorical and iconic assumptions of the Art of Memory and its relation to chiasmus.






FITZGERALD, F. SCOTT
TENDER IS THE NIGHT, ED. JAMES L. W. WEST III (Cambridge, 30 April 2012) -AL-

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Tender Is the Night (published 1934) in a series of extensively reworked drafts over nine years. Using Fitzgerald's working materials -- notes, diagrams, holographs, typescripts, proofs, and correspondence -- this edition, which is part of the authoritative Cambridge Edition of Fitzgerald's works, reconstructs in detail the passage of the novel from manuscript to print.






FLINT, KATE, ED.
THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF VICTORIAN LITERATURE (Cambridge, March 2012) -VS-

Written by a team of well-known scholars who situate both authors and words within their cultural and historical contexts, including the history of the British Empire, this book offers sections on publishing and readership, a chronological survey of major literary developments between 1837 and 1901, and essays on topics ranging from sexuality and sensation to epic and economics. The final chapters consider how Victorian literature, and the period as a whole, influenced twentieth-century writers.
To be reviewed by David Riede.





GAROFALO, DANIELA
WOMEN, LOVE, AND COMMODITY CULTURE IN BRITISH ROMANTICISM (Ashgate, May 2012) -REF-RPO-

According to Garofalo, Romantic writers critiqued the idea that erotic love enabled one to transcend political and economic realities. Just as preoccupied with political economy as with the nature of desire, Blake, Byron, Scott, Keats, and Emily Brontë all challenged stereotypical representations of women consumers and considered women's desire a force for radical change.






GORDON, JOHN
SENSATION AND SUBLIMATION IN CHARLES DICKENS (Palgrave, 2011) -VF-

Probing what has been called the "hidden springs" of Dickens' fiction in Oliver Twist, Dombey and Son, and Bleak House, Gordon argues that in all three, Dickens responds to some identifiable force represented as coming from underneath the ground plan--plot, character interaction, development of themes, stylistic effects--of the book in question.
To be reviewed by Diana Archibald.





GROSSMAN, JONATHAN H.
CHARLES DICKENS'S NETWORKS: PUBLIC TRANSPORT AND THE NOVEL (Oxford, May 2012) -VF-VS-

The same week in February 1836 that Charles Dickens was hired to write his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, the first railway line in London opened. Charles Dickens's Networks explores the rise of the global, high-speed passenger transport network in the nineteenth century and the indelible impact it made on Dickens's work.
To be reviewed by Laurence Davies.





HAWKINS, ANN AND MAURA IVES, EDS.
WOMEN WRITERS AND THE ARTIFACTS OF CELEBRITY IN THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY (Ashgate, February 2012) -WW-

This collection traces the unique experiences of nineteenth-century women writers within a celebrity culture that was intimately connected to the expansion of print technology and of visual and material culture in the nineteenth century. The contributors examine a range of artifacts, including prefaces, portraits, frontispieces, birthday books, and even gossip columns, in this suggestive exploration of how nineteenth-century women writers achieved popular, critical, and commercial success. (See also Weber)
To be reviewed by Tom Mole.





HAYWOOD, IAN AND JOHN SEED, EDS.
THE GORDON RIOTS (Cambridge, 29 February 2012) -REPR-

The Gordon riots of June 1780 were the most devastating outbreak of urban violence in British history. This book brings together leading scholars from historical and literary studies to provide new perspectives on these momentous events. The essays offer new interpretations of contemporary literary and artistic sources.
To be reviewed by Ronald Paulson.





HENRY, NANCY
LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT: A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY (Wiley-Blackwell, April 2012) -VF-VS-WW-

This new assessment of Eliot's life and work combines recent biographical research with critical analysis, offering new interpretations of her literary work.
To be reviewed by Joanne Shattock.





HESS, SCOTT
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND THE ECOLOGY OF AUTHORSHIP: THE ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTALISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CULTURE (Virginia, April 2012) -LS-RPO-

Instead of viewing Wordsworth as an early ecologist, Hess argues that he exemplifies "the ecology of authorship": a primarily middle-class, nineteenth-century conception of nature associated with aesthetics, high culture, individualism, and nation. Rather than being universal, Hess contends, the Wordsworthian vision of nature was male, middle-class, professional, and culturally elite--like much of the environmental movement today.
To be reviewed by Ashton Nichols.





HIPSKY, MARTIN
MODERNISM AND THE WOMEN'S POPULAR ROMANCE IN BRITAIN, 1885-1925 (Ohio, 2011) 324pp. -

Scrutinizing popular fiction in the decades straddling the turn of the twentieth century, when "low modern" jostled "high modernist" British culture, Hipsky links the work of romance novelists such as Elinor Glyn and Rebecca West to the fiction of such modernist greats as Woolf, Joyce, and Lawrence.






HOLLINGTON, MICHAEL, ED.
THE RECEPTION OF CHARLES DICKENS IN EUROPE, 2 VOLS. (Continuum, December 2011) -VF-

Surveying the reception of Dickens in all major European countries (plus many smaller ones) and his impact on major European authors and movements, contributors examine such topics as the decline of Dickens's fortunes at the end of the nineteenth century, his subsequent popularity--partly driven by the rise of film--in the period of Modernism, and the response to Dickens in times of political upheaval and revolution.
To be reviewed by Stephen Prickett.





INGS-CHAMBERS, CAROLINE
LOUISA WATERFORD AND JOHN RUSKIN: "FOR YOU HAVE NOT FALSELY PRAISED." (MHRA, Spring 2012) -LVA-VS-

Analyzing Ruskin's correspondence and work with Louisa Waterford, this book compares them with the ideas expressed in his published works, his correspondence and work with other artists, his tastes in art, and his interests in the British art circles of the nineteenth century.
To be reviewed by Sara Atwood.





JAMES, HENRY
COMPLETE LETTERS, 1872-1876, ED. PIERRE WALKER & GREG W. ZACHARIAS (Nebraska, 2011) 328 pp. -AL-

The fifth installment in the complete collection of James's more than 10,000 letters, this is the third volume of three comprised of his letters from 1872 to 1876.
To be reviewed by Matthew Badura.





JOHNSON, CLAUDIA
JANE AUSTEN'S CULTS AND CULTURES (Chicago, June 2012) -REF-WW-

To show how Jane Austen gained her legendary status, Johnson first examines the most important monuments and portraits of an author who remains invisible and yet whose image is inseparable from the characters and fictional worlds she created. Passing through four critical phases of Austen's reception up to the establishment of the Austen House and Museum in 1949, Johnson explains what the adoration of Austen has meant to readers over the past two centuries. By respecting the intelligence of past commentary about Austen, Johnson shows, we are able to revisit her work and unearth fresh insights and new possibilities.
To be reviewed by Deirdre Lynch.





JUNOD, KAREN
WRITING THE LIVES OF PAINTERS: BIOGRAPHY AND ARTISTIC IDENTITY IN BRITAIN 1760-1810 (Oxford, 2011) -LVA-

Tracing the emergence of a new literary genre in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this book shows how the biographies of painters preserved some traditional tropes while creating new individual and social narratives for the sake of new reading audiences, and thus dismantling the historiographic model established by Vasari. Junod also argues that the sheer variety of painters' written lives mirrored the privileging of artistic originality and difference within an art world that had yet to generate a coherent "British School" of painting.
To be reviewed by Thomas McLean.





KATSARON, LAURE
NEW YORK-PARIS: WHITMAN, BAUDELAIRE, AND THE HYBRID CITY (Michigan, October 2012) 176 pp. -AL-

Exploring the images of the mid-nineteenth century city in the poetry of Whitman and Baudelaire, this book shows how they each responded to panoramas, dioramas, and photography, and also-- rather than creating a paradigmatically happy mixture of "high" and "low" culture-- how they each tried to resist the apparently irresistible forward momentum of modernity.






KEIRN, TIM AND NORBERT SCHURER, EDS.
BRITISH ENCOUNTERS WITH INDIA, 1750-1830 A SOURCEBOOK (Palgrave US, 5 August 2011) -LP-REPR-

This 18th- and early 19th-century primary texts and images gathered here represent various facets of the cross-cultural interaction between India and Britain. The anthology suggests that for a brief period -- while most Europeans were involved in projects of Empire and domination - some British writers envisioned a convergence of cultures.
To be reviewed by Gillen Wood.





KRIESEL, DEANNA
ECONOMIC WOMAN: DEMAND, GENDER, AND NARRATIVE CLOSURE IN ELIOT AND HARDY (Toronto, December 2011) 320 pp. -VF-

Kreisel shows how images of feminized sexuality in novels by Eliot and Hardy reflected widespread contemporary anxieties about the growth of capitalism. Examining key works such as The Mill on the Floss and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Kreisel investigates the "economic woman," who embodies idealized sexual restraint and wise domestic management, and the degraded prostitute, who embodies sexual excess and economic turmoil.






LANSDOWN, RICHARD AND HALINA ADAMS
THE CAMBRIDGE INTRODUCTION TO BYRON (Cambridge, 30 April, 2012) -RPO-

No Romantic poet has a higher profile than Lord Byron, whose life and writings remain compelling to new audiences. This accessible study -- designed for students and the general reader -- covers his life, his intellectual and historical context and all areas of his prodigious creativity, in both prose and verse.






LAPORTE, CHARLES
VICTORIAN POETS AND THE CHANGING BIBLE (Virginia, November 2011) -LR-VPO-

Charles LaPorte charts the impact of post-Enlightenment biblical criticism on English literary culture. Building upon a recent and ongoing reevaluation of religion as a vital aspect of Victorian culture, LaPorte shows the enduring relevance of religion in a period usually associated with its decline. The poets he examines all wrestled with modern findings about the Bible's fortuitous historical composition, yet they owed much of their extraordinary literary success to their ability to capitalize upon the progress of avant-garde biblical interpretation. LaPorte's revisionary and provocative thesis speaks not only to the course of English poetics but also to the logic of nineteenth-century literary hierarchies and to the continuing evolution of religion in the modern era.






LAWSON, ANDREW
DOWNWARDLY MOBILE: THE CHANGING FORTUNES OF AMERICAN REALISM (Oxford, April 2012) -AL-

Examining works by Rebecca Harding Davis, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Hamlin Garland, and others, this book links the development of literary realism in the nineteenth century to a growing sense of economic precariousness within the American middle class.
To be reviewed by Elizabeth Duquette.





LEE, YING S.
MASCULINITY AND THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS: STUDIES IN VICTORIAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND FICTION Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory (Routledge, May 15th 2012) 264 pp. -VF-VS-

Probing representations of working-class masculine subjectivity in Victorian autobiography and fiction, Ying highlights domesticity and the male body and shows that working-class masculinities differ substantially from those of the widely studied upper classes. She also reads working-class autobiographies in light of public interest in "the lower orders" stirred by working-class characters in popular novels written by middle-class authors.
To be reviewed by Tara MacDonald.





LINDSTROM, ERIC
ROMANTIC FIAT (Palgrave USA, 2011) -RPO-

In its economics of 'fiat' money as much as in the imagination of its poets, the legacy of romanticism involves a series of absolutist gestures of verbal fiat: a little-noted rhetoric subject to historical and philosophical pressures. Focused on Wordsworth but attendant to his poet-successors and modern critics, this book argues for a double romantic signature of "let there be" and "let be."
To be reviewed by John Hodgson.





LONGINOVIC, TOMISLAV Z.
VAMPIRE NATION: VIOLENCE AS CULTURAL IMAGINARY (Duke, September 2011) -LVA-VF-

Applying the figure of the vampire to nationalism and genocide in Serbia and other parts of Eastern Europe, Longinovic argues that Western accounts of "the Serbs" have turned the actual history of Serbia into an imaginary Gothic construct: a prototypical vampire nation. Bram Stoker's Dracula, he contends, set the stage for late-twentieth-century perceptions of the entire Balkan region, where--it is alleged--men of excessive and uniquely malignant passions have tried to halt the progress and enlightenment of the West. But as Longinovic shows, various counter-culture voices are now trying to redefine the national identity, using film, literature, and the new media to challenge the vampire nation and its state institutions and to practice new forms of collectivity.
To be reviewed by Laurence Davies.





LOWNDES, EMMA
TURNING VICTORIAN LADIES INTO WOMEN : THE LIFE OF BESSIE RAYNER PARKES, 1829 - 1925 (Academica, March 15, 2012) 284 pp. -VS-WW-

This first biography of Bessie Rayner Parkes highlights one of the most prominent and influential campaigners for women's rights in the nineteenth century. As chief editor of the first feminist British periodical, The English Woman's Journal (a London monthly published from 1858 to 1864), she argued that women deserved to be educated and trained for paid work. She also developed a wide circle of literary friends ranging from George Eliot and the Brownings to John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
To be reviewed by Cheri Larsen Hoeckley.





LUSSIER, MARK S.
ROMANTIC DHARMA (Palgrave, 2011) -LR-RPO-

This book maps the emergence of Buddhism into European consciousness during the first half of the nineteenth century, probes the shared ethical and intellectual commitments embedded in Buddhist and Romantic thought, and proposes potential ways by which those insights translate into contemporary critical and pedagogical practices.






MACHOR, JAMES L.
READING FICTION IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA: INFORMED RESPONSE AND RECEPTION HISTORIES, 1820-1865 (Johns Hopkins, April 2011) -AL-

Combining response and reception criticism and theory, Malchor mines book reviews, letters, and diaries for contemporary responses to Poe, Melville, Catherine Sedgwick, and Caroline Cheesbro.’ In so doing, Machor shows not only that their fiction was read quite differently from the way it is read now, but also that the reading practices of nineteenth-century Americans shaped the experiences and later reputations of these four writers.
To be reviewed by Terence Whalen.





MALCOLM, DAVID
THE BRITISH AND IRISH SHORT STORY HANDBOOK (Wiley-Blackwell, February 2012) -VF-

This book includes a wide-ranging analysis of non-canonical and non-realist writers as well as the major authors and their works. It closely examines the range of genres in the British and Irish short story, including a large section on the British short story in the Second World War.






MARSHALL, BRIDGET M.
THE TRANSATLANTIC GOTHIC NOVEL AND THE LAW, 1790-1860 (Ashgate, 2011) -AL-REF-

Tracing the use of legal themes in the gothic novel, Bridget M. Marshall shows novelists like William Godwin, Mary Shelley, Charles Brockden Brown, and Hannah Crafts questioning the foundations of the Anglo-American justice system. Often invoking actual laws like the Black Act in England or the Fugitive Slave Act in America, gothic novels connect the genre's fantastic horrors with much more shocking examples of terror and injustice like American slavery.
To be reviewed by Denise Guidry.





MARSHALL, GAIL, ED.
SHAKESPEARE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (Cambridge, March 2012) -DR-

This new collection of essays show that Shakespeare's voice resonated tellingly throughout the arenas of culture, politics, and literature in nineteenth-century England. They also show how popular he was in London theatres and how salient he was in the publishing industry as well as in the burgeoning field of literary criticism. Besides the editor, contributors include Christopher Decker, Mark Hollingsworth, Kathryn Prince, Russell Jackson, Philip Shaw, David Taylor, Richard Foulkes, Julie Sanders, Georgianna Ziegler, William Greenslade, Julia Thomas, Stuart Sillars, John Stokes, Frederick Burwick, Virginia Mason Vaughan, and Janice Norwood.
To be reviewed by Richard Schoch.





MARTIN, MEREDITH
THE RISE AND FALL OF METER: POETRY AND ENGLISH NATIONAL CULTURE, 1860-1930 (Princeton, June 2012) -VPO-

Martin tells the unknown story of English meter from the late eighteenth century until just after World War I and shows that the history of prosody is tied to the ways Victorian England argued about its national identity and influenced the prose and poems of Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and Alice Meynell.
To be reviewed by Eric Walker.





MATOS, T. CARLO
IBSEN'S FOREIGN CONTAGION: HENRIK IBSEN, ARTHUR WING PINERO AND MODERNISM ON THE LONDON STAGE, 1890 - 1900 (Academica, December 15, 2011) 304 pp. -DR-VS-

Showing that most reviews of the first London production of Ghosts in 1891 were not just vituperative but also steeped in metaphors of disease (as if the play itself were contagious), Matos also charts the transmission of modern dramatic innovation from Ibsen to Arthur Wing Pinero and George Bernard Shaw. Without Ibsen's boundary-breaking work, Matos argues, Pinero could never have written the plays that helped to modernize British drama and set the stage for playwrights such as Shaw and Wilde.
To be reviewed by Alexis Soloski.





MIKICS, DAVID, ED.
THE ANNOTATED EMERSON (Harvard, February 2012) 576 pp. -AL-

With the aid of color illustrations and archival photographs, Mikics' running commentaries on Emerson's essays, addresses, and poems illuminate contexts, allusions, and language likely to puzzle modern readers. He quotes extensively from Emerson's Journal to shed light on particular passages or lines and examines Emerson the essayist, poet, itinerant lecturer, and political activist.






MORRIS, RUTH
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON AND THE JEWISH QUESTION: A VICTORIAN ENGLISH NOVELIST AND THE WORLDS OF ANGLO-JEWRY, ZIONISM AND JUDAISM, 1859 -- 1913 (Academica, 2011) pp. 264 -LR-VF-

Investigating Jewish characters in seventy of Braddon's novels from the mid-nineteenth century to the eve of World War One, Morris shows how the changing appearance of these characters reflects the changing social and economic status of the Anglo-Jewish population. Her fiction, Morris reveals, grapples with topics such as Jewish conversion to Christianity, the beginnings of the Zionist movement, and the various migrations of Jews to England from continental Europe, Eurasia and the Middle East.
To be reviewed by Meri-Jane Rochelson.





MORRIS, RUTH
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON'S BELGRAVIA, A LONDON MAGAZINE, AND THE WORLD OF ANGLO-JEWRY, JEWS AND JUDAISM, 1866 - 1899 (Academica, March 6, 2012) 264 pp. -LR-VS-

Since no account of Braddon's response to "the Jewish Question" can be complete without reference to Belgravia, this book supplements Morris's earlier study of Jewish characters in her fiction by showing how Judaism and Jewish life were both reflected in her periodical.
To be reviewed by Meri-Jane Rochelson.





OLIPHANT, MARGARET
SELECTED WORKS, PART II, ED. JOANNE SHATTOCK, ELISABETH JAY, LINDA PETERSON, TREV LYNN BROUGHTON, DAVID JASPER, FRANCIS O'GORMAN AND TESS COSSLETT 5 vols. (Pickering & Chatto/ Ashgate, June 2012) 200 pp. -VF-VS-WW-

Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) had a prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, fifty or more short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. This is the most ambitious critical edition of her work.






OWENSON, SIDNEY
FLORENCE MACARTHY: AN IRISH TALE ED. JENNY MACAULEY (Pickering & Chatto: Chawton House Library, May 2012) 400 pp. -REF-

With textual variants and thorough annotation, this is the first modern scholarly edition of Owenson's seventh novel. As the most sophisticated of her four "national tales," it wove conventional romance plotlines through the political and social problems that followed the passage of the Act of Union in 1800. A comprehensive introduction sets the novel within the context of Irish political and social history, print culture, women's studies and literary theory.
To be reviewed by Julie Donovan.





PAMBOUKIAN, SYLVIA A.
DOCTORING THE NOVEL: MEDICINE AND QUACKERY FROM SHELLEY TO DOYLE (Ohio, March 2012) -LS-REF-VF-

To show how public language constructs and stabilizes medical categories, this book examines Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Charles Dickens's Bleak House and Little Dorrit, Charlotte Brontë's Villette, Wilkie Collins's Armadale, and Arthur Conan Doyle's Stark Munro Letters. Contextualized in both medical and popular publishing, literary analysis reveals that even scientific concepts such as orthodoxy and quackery evolve not in elite laboratories and bourgeois medical societies but in the rough-and-tumble of the public sphere.
To be reviewed by Joanne Eysell.





PATTEN, ROBERT L.
CHARLES DICKENS AND 'BOZ': THE BIRTH OF THE INDUSTRIAL-AGE AUTHOR (Cambridge, June 2012) -VF-

Taking account of everything known about Dickens's apprentice years and working within the context of early Victorian social and political history as well as print culture, Patten shows how Dickens struggled to create an alter ego, Boz, which he then had to contain and extinguish. Dickens, Patten reveals, created an authorial persona that highlighted certain attributes and concealed others about his life, talent and publications.






PHEGLEY, JENNIFER, JOHN CYRIL BARTON AND KRISTIN N. HUSTON, EDS.
TRANSATLANTIC SENSATIONS (Ashgate, January 2012) -AL-VF-

Reading sensation fiction in light of transatlantic studies, this collection reveals the symbiotic relationship between literary works on both sides of the Atlantic. Contributors trace the evolution of the sensation genre from early sentimental and gothic fiction through works by authors such as Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins, and Charles Reade.
To be reviewed by Lyn Pykett.





PRETTEJOHN, ELIZABETH
THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO THE PRE-RAPHAELITES (Cambridge, July 2012) -LVA-VS-

In the first general introduction to the Pre-Raphaelite movement that integrates its literary and visual art forms, this book explores the lives and works of the Rossettis, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Ford Madox Brown, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. It also explains what made the Pre-Raphaelite style unique in painting, poetry, drawing and prose.
To be reviewed by Julie Codell.





PRICE, LEAH
HOW TO DO THINGS WITH BOOKS IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN (Princeton, May 2012) -VF-VS-

Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew and anonymous religious tracts and household manuals, Price reconstructs how Victorians thought and felt about books and offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history.
To be reviewed by Daniel Hack.





RASMUSSEN, BIRGIT BRANDER
QUEEQUEG'S COFFIN: INDIGENOUS LITERACIES AND EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE (Duke, 2012) -AL-

Rather than seeing American literature as beginning with the writings of English or Spanish colonists, Brander Rasmussen points to the wide variety of pictorial, non-alphabetic writing that was indigenous to the Americas before colonization. By examining such writing between 1524 and the mid-19th century work of Herman Melville, this book aims to point a new direction for early American studies.






REBHORN, MATTHEW
PIONEER PERFORMANCES: STAGING THE FRONTIER (Oxford, January 2012) -AL-DR-

Pioneer Performances offers the first synoptic treatment of the history of American frontier performance ranging from Jacksonian America to Buffalo Bill's Wild West show at the Columbian Exposition of 1893. It reconceives how the frontier was--and still is--defined in performance, and what it means for that frontier to be called "American."






RICHARDSON, RUTH
DICKENS AND THE WORKHOUSE: OLIVER TWIST AND THE LONDON POOR (Oxford, April 2012) -LP-VF-

The story of the recently discovered London workhouse that Charles Dickens lived almost next door to in the years before he wrote Oliver Twist is told by the historian who did the sleuthing behind these new findings.
To be reviewed by Stephen Prickett.





ROSS, IAIN
OSCAR WILDE AND ANCIENT GREECE (Cambridge, November 2012) -DR-VS-

A comprehensive account of Oscar Wilde's lifelong interest in ancient Greece, from his schoolboy studies to the transmutation of classical culture and sources into his published works.
To be reviewed by Isobel Hurst.





ROWE, JOHN, CARLOS ROWE AND ERIC HARALSON, EDS.
A HISTORICAL GUIDE TO HENRY JAMES (Oxford, January 2012) -AL-

This collection of essays highlights the historical and cultural issues that influenced James.






ROWLAND, PETER
DICKENSIAN DIGRESSIONS : THE HUNTER, THE HAUNTER, AND THE HAUNTED (Academica, 2011) -VF-

Exploring various aspects of Dickens' life and work, Rowland shows that he was heavily influenced by the essays of Charles Lamb and feuded with T.B. Macauley for twenty-five years. Other topics include a search for the original of Bob Fagin, the revelation of a public letter addressed by Dickens to his first love Maria Beadnell, H.G. Wells' updated--but also undetected-- version of David Copperfield, and Dickens' belief in ghosts






RUDD, ANDREW
SYMPATHY AND INDIA IN BRITISH LITERATURE, 1770-1830 (Palgrave 27 May 2011) -LP-REPR-

Showing how writers ranging from Edmund Burke and Sir William Jones to Robert Southey and Thomas Moore sought to grapple with India's strangeness, mystique and sheer geographical distance from Britain, this book argues that they did so by means of imaginative sympathy and the related discourses of sensibility and sentimentalism. Distinctively retelling the story of Britain's dealings with India, Rudd draws on recent critical interest in sympathy, colonialism and Romantic Orientalism.
To be reviewed by Ross Forman.





SALER, MICHAEL
AS IF: MODERN ENCHANTMENT AND THE LITERARY PREHISTORY OF VIRTUAL REALITY (Oxford, January 2012) -LS-VF-

A history of imaginary worlds from the late nineteenth century to the present, from Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes to the virtual worlds of computer games.






SAMUELS, SHIRLEY
READING THE AMERCIAN NOVEL 1780-1865 (Wiley-Blackwell, January 2012) -AL-

Charting the evolution and diversity of fictional genres produced in the United States from the late 18th century to the Civil War, this book closely examines specific novels as well as exploring their social and historical contexts. It also pursues questions of identity-- about the novel itself, its 19th-century readers, and the emerging structure of the United States.
To be reviewed by Alfred Bendixen.





SANBORN, GEOFFREY AND SAMUEL OTTER, EDS.
MELVILLE AND AESTHETICS (Palgrave, 30 August 2011) -AL-

Ranging across Melville’s career and highlighting the particularities of his work, contributors consider not only the sources and implications of his aesthetics, but also the relationship between aesthetic criticism, historical analysis, and contemporary theory.
To be reviewed by John Wenke.





SANDY, MARK, ED.
ROMANTIC PRESENCES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (Ashgate, 2012) 236 pp. -

Tracking the influence of Romantic thought and literary practice in works by twentieth-century British, Irish and American artists, this collection examines the complicated legacy of Romanticism in twentieth-century novels, poetry and film. Besides the editor, contributors include Nicholas Roe, Madeline Callaghan, Lisa M. Steinman, Michael O’Neill, Paige Tovey, Heidi Thomson, Edward Larrissy, Michael Mack, Kathleen Wheeler, Sarah Wootton, Andrew Bennett, and Stephen J. Burn.






SCHRAMM, JAN-MELISSA
ATONEMENT AND SELF-SACRIFICE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY NARRATIVE (Cambridge, July 2012) -LP-VF-

This book weighs the Christian ideal of self-sacrifice against Victorian criminal law, which repudiated models of sacrifice that scapegoated the innocent. Schramm shows how the conflict between these two concepts of sacrifice informs the fiction of novelists such as Dickens, Gaskell, and Eliot at a time when acts of Chartist protest, national sacrifices made during the Crimean War, and the extension of the franchise combined to call into question what it means for one man to 'stand for' and perhaps even 'die for', another.
To be reviewed by Christine Krueger.





SCHUYLER, DAVID
SANCTIFIED LANDSCAPE: WRITERS, ARTISTS, AND THE HUDSON RIVER VALLEY, 1820-1909 (Cornell, May 2012) -AL-LVA-

Schuyler explores the cultural history of the Hudson River Valley during a period when the region was important for the development of an American national identity. With chapters on tourism, art, literature, historic preservation, and architecture and gardening, Schuyler demonstrates the emergence of a regional identity and a corresponding environmental consciousness, both of which would have national implications.






SIEGEL, DANIEL
CHARITY AND CONDESCENSION: VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND THE DILEMMAS OF PHILANTHROPY (Ohio, April 2012) -LP-VF-

This book argues that as the traditional English virtue of condescension went sour in the nineteenth century, its failure influenced Victorian efforts to reform philanthropy and to construct new narrative models of social conciliation. In the literary work of authors like Dickens, Eliot, and Tennyson, and in the writing of reformers like Octavia Hill and Samuel Barnett, condescension--once a sign of the power and value of charity--became an emblem of charity's limitations.






SILER, JACK L.
POETIC LANGUAGE AND POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT IN THE POETRY OF KEATS Studies in Major Literary Authors (Routledge, May 15) 132 pp. -RPO-

Tracing the uneasy relationship between the content of Keats' poems and social history, Siler links the early poems to the mission statement of the radical journal Annals of the Fine Arts, while the poems after Endymion, he argues, reveal a poet more preoccupied with the why and wherefore of poetic representation.






SIMMONS, ALLAN H., JOHN G. PETERS AND J. H. STAPE, EDS.
JOSEPH CONRAD: CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS, 4 VOLS. (Cambridge, 30 April 2012) -VF-

Charting the contemporary reception of Conrad's works in the English-speaking world, the reviews collected here cover all of Conrad's writings from Almayer's Folly (1895) to the posthumously published Last Essays (1926).
To be reviewed by Peter Mallios.





SMITH, MARTHA NELL
EMILY DICKINSON: A USERS GUIDE (Wiley-Blackwell, July 2012) -AL-WW-

Reading Dickinson through the lenses ground by her readers' sense of her life and work, this book draws on prominent critical views from the past century, including sentimental, modernist, new critical, psychological, feminist and postmodernist approaches. The book includes an interactive appendix focused on the Dickinson Electronic Archives, a major online resource the author has been developing for the past ten years.






STEINITZ, REBECCA
TIME, SPACE, AND GENDER IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH DIARY (Palgrave, 11 October 2011) -REF-VS-

Closely examining manuscript diaries, diary publication, and diaries in fiction, this book shows how the diary's construction of time and space made it an invaluable and uniquely effective vehicle for the dominant discourses of the period; it also explains how such a vast and varied genre evolved into the feminine, emotive, private form we continue to privilege today.
To be reviewed by Deborah Denenholz Morse.





STRAND, AMY DUNHAM
LANGUAGE, GENDER, AND CITIZENSHIP IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1789-1919 Studies in American Popular History and Culture (Routledge, May 15) 262 pp. -AL-

Examining language debates and literary texts from Noah Webster to H.L. Mencken and from Washington Irving to Charlotte Perkins Gilman, this book shows how gender arose in passionate discussions about language to address concerns about national identity and national citizenship elicited by 19th-century sociopolitical transformations. Strand also shows how ideologies of language, gender, and nation have been inter-articulated in American history and culture and how American literature has been entwined in their construction, reflection, and dissemination.






THURSTON, LUKE
LITERARY GHOSTS FROM THE VICTORIANS TO MODERNISM: THE HAUNTING INTERVAL Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature (May 25, 2012) 192 pp. -LS-VS-

Linking little-studied authors like M. R. James and May Sinclair to such canonical figures as Dickens, Henry James, Woolf, and Joyce, Thurston argues that the literary ghost should be seen as no mere relic of gothic style but as a portal of discovery, an opening onto the central modernist problem of how to write "life itself." Reading the ghost story as both a guest and a host story, this book traces the ghost as a disruptive figure in the "hospitable" space of narrative from Maturin, Poe and Dickens to the fin de siècle, and then on into the twentieth century.






TIGHE, MARY
SELENA: A SCHOLARLY EDITION, ED. HARRIET KRAMER LINKIN (Ashgate, August 2012) -REF-

Based on the only known copy of the manuscript, housed in the National Library of Ireland, Linkin's scrupulously annotated edition of Tighe's hitherto unpublished courtship novel (c. 1809) establishes its importance for understanding the history of the novel, fiction by women, Anglo-Irish fiction, silver-fork novels, and the Romantic period.






TOMC, SANDRA
INDUSTRY AND THE CREATIVE MIND: THE ECCENTRIC WRITER IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND ENTERTAINMENT, 1790-1860 (Michigan, June 2012) 328 pp. -AL-

This book argues that in the U.S., myths of writerly zaniness and irresponsibility predated the development of a commercial arts and entertainment industry and, instead of rebelling against this industry, helped to found it. By examining the careers of early American writers ranging from Edgar Allen Poe to now forgotten hacks, Tomc shows how early nineteenth-century American arts and entertainment systems incorporated writerly eccentricity in their "logical" economic workings, placing the mad, rebellious writer at the center of the industry's productivity and success.






TREDDENICK, BIANCA, ED.
VICTORIAN TRANSFORMATIONS: GENRE, NATIONALISM AND DESIRE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE (Ashgate, 2011) -VS-

Focussing on genre, nationalism, and desire, contributors explore the ways in which nineteenth-century literary figures such as Hugo, Trollope, Carlyle and Dante Gabriel Rossetti represented and created change.






VIGUS, JAMES, ED.
HENRY CRABB ROBINSON: DIARY OF A PEDESTRIAN TOUR (1801). (MHRA, Spring 2012) -REPR-

This critical edition of Henry Crabb Robinson's manuscript diary of his walking tour of 1801, mainly in Saxony, makes available an almost unknown text, outstanding for its coherence, readability and meticulous record of places visited, people encountered and books devoured.
To be reviewed by Eugene Stelzig.





WAGNER, TAMARA, ED.
FRANCES TROLLOPE: BEYOND "DOMESTIC MANNERS" (Routledge, August 1, 2012) 160 pp. -VS-WW-

Chiefly remembered for her travel writing, especially for the notoriously controversial Domestic Manners of the Americans, Frances Trollope wrote social-problems novels about industrial England, satirical exposures of evangelical Christianity, and also the first anti-slavery novel. In reassessing what this controversial yet popular writer produced from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s, contributors to this volume examine the variety of her sometimes outraged responses to the social and cultural developments of the time. Besides the editor, contributors include Elsie B. Michie, Lucy Sussex, Brenda Ayres, Christine Sutphin, Barbara Pauk, and Susan Walton.






WEBER, BRENDA R.
WOMEN AND LITERARY CELEBRITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE TRANSATLANTIC PRODUCTION OF FAME AND GENDER (Ashgate, August 2012) -VF-WW-

Focusing on representations of women's literary celebrity in nineteenth-century nonfiction and fiction, Weber examines the transatlantic cultural politics of gender, sex, and the body in the work of authors such as Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Margaret Oliphant. (See also Hawkins.)






WHITLA, WILLIAM
VICTORIAN LITERATURE: AN ANTHOLOGY (Wiley-Blackwell, 12 September 2012) -VS-

Featuring groups and individuals rarely if ever anthologized (working-class, colonial, and gay and lesbian writers), offering both canonical and non-canonical writers in poetry, drama, prose fiction, life-writing, and non-fictional prose, this book includes a number of complete longer poems as well as short stories, extracts from numerous autobiographies, and selections from periodical journalism.
To be reviewed by Jared Hromadka.





WILLIS, MARTIN
VISION, SCIENCE AND LITERATURE 1870-1920: OCULAR HORIZONS (Pickering & Chatto/ Ashgate, November 2011) 320 pp. -LVA-VS-

This book explores the role of vision and the culture of observation in Victorian and modernist ways of seeing. Willis charts the characterization of vision through four organizing principles - small, large, past and future - to survey Victorian conceptions of what vision was. He then explores how this Victorian vision influenced twentieth-century ways of seeing, when anxieties over visual "truth" became entwined with modernist rejections of objectivity.
To be reviewed by Garrett Peck.





WYNNE, CATHERINE, ED.
BRAM STOKER AND THE STAGE: REVIEWS, REMINISCENCES, ESSAYS AND FICTION, 2 VOLS. (Pickering & Chatto, October 2012) 800 pp. -DR-VS-

This collection brings together all Stoker's theatrical reviews from Dublin's Evening Mail, his published essays and interviews on the theatre, selections from Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906) and a fictional work on the theatre.
To be reviewed by Peter Saccio.



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