A Concise Companion to the Victorian Novel

Notes on Contributors ix

Acknowledgements xii

List of illustrations xiii

Chronology xiv

Introduction 1
Francis O’Gorman

1 ‘The sun and moon were made to give them light’: Empire in the Victorian Novel 4
Cannon Schmitt

2 ‘Seeing is believing?’: Visuality and Victorian Fiction 25
Kate Flint

3 ‘The boundaries of social intercourse’: Class in the Victorian Novel 47
James Eli Adams

4 Legal subjects, legal objects: The Law and Victorian Fiction 71
Clare Pettitt

5 ‘The withering of the individual’: Psychology in the Victorian Novel 91
Nicholas Dames

6 ‘Telling of my weekly doings’: The Material Culture of the Victorian Novel 113
Mark W. Turner

7 ‘Farewell poetry and aerial flights’: The Function of the Author and Victorian Fiction 134
Richard Salmon

8 Everywhere and nowhere: Sexuality in the Victorian Novel 156
Carolyn Dever

9 ‘One of the larger lost continents’: Religion in the Victorian Novel 180
Michael Wheeler

10 ‘The difference between human beings’: Biology in the Victorian Novel 202
Angelique Richardson

11 ‘One great confederation?’: Europe in the Victorian Novel 232
John Rignall

12 ‘A long deep sob of that mysterious wondrous happiness that is one with pain’: Emotion in the Victorian Novel 253
Francis O’Gorman

Index 271