Victoriana - Histories, Fictions, Criticism

A series of astute critical reflections on our enduring fascination with all things Victorian.In this book Cora Kaplan looks at the politics of ‘Victoriana’ from the 1970s to the present, a politics that emerges from the alternation between nostalgia and critique in fiction, film, biography and literary studies. She asks how Jane Eyre can still evoke tears and rage, as well as inspiring imitation and high art, and why Henry James has become fiction’s favourite late Victorian character in the new millennium? ‘Victoriana’, the book argues, has developed a modern history of its own in which we can trace the shifting social and cultural concerns of the last few decades. Through the constant interrogation of ‘history’ in such innovative works as John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, A.S. Byatt’s Possession, David Lodge’s Nice Work, Peter Ackroyd’s Dickens, Jane Campion’s The Piano, Colm Tóibín’s The Master, Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty and Julian Barnes’s Arthur and George, 'Victoriana' maps out a very particular postmodern temporality.Features* Uses the Victorian as a touchstone for late 20th and early 21st century writers helping readers to understand the changing meaning of Victorian literature and culture across time.* Explores different genres of Victoriana showing the differences and convergences in the ways in which criticism, biography, fiction and film rewrite the Victorian.* Analyses the pleasures and politics of reading or viewing the recycling of the Victorian past highlighting the relationship between the act of reading and the social and political elements of the texts.* Focuses on work by well-known writers, critics, filmmakers and artists such as A S Byatt, David Lodge, ColmTóibín and Sarah Waters in relationship to nineteenth-century authors such as Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens and Henry

Cora Kaplan (1940-2024) was Professor Emerita, University of Southampton and Honorary Professor in the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London. Her books include Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism (2007); Genders (with David Glover; 2000; 2009); Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism (1986); Salt and Bitter and Good: Three Centuries of English and American Women Poets (1975; 2020). From 1992-1995 she served as Director, Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University, New Jersey.