Julia Prewitt Brown, "A Reader's Guide to the Nineteenth Century English No

Julia Prewitt Brown, "A Reader's Guide to the Nineteenth-Century English Novel"

Macmillan Publishing Co | ISBN: 0020795602 | 1985 | 137 pages | siPDF | 2 MB

The popularity of novels such as David Copperfield and Pride and Prejudice shows that the American love affair with the nineteenth-century English novel continues unabated. But the mixture of the familiar and the foreign that charms today's readers also increases the likelihood that they will miss subtle signals that illuminate the works for readers more conversant with English history and society.

A Reader's Guide to the Nineteenth-Century English Novel examines the values of Victorian society—values that arose from widely held assumptions about the relative importance of birth and money, the power of the aristocracy, the place of the Church of England. Only with an understanding of the basic assumptions that shaped the world of Austen and Thackeray are readers able to appreciate the significance of a governess rising to be mistress of a large estate while a lady drops into barely genteel poverty in Emma, or of Becky Sharpe's statement that she "could be a good woman" on five thousand a year—a fortune—in Vanity Fair.

In this accessible social history, Harvard University teacher Julia Prewitt Brown explains why making a good marriage proved so important to Victorians of both sexes and thus became a dominant theme in the literature of the time. Brown also details the functioning of the English educational system, the issues in the century's political reforms, and the restraints under which Victorian writers labored.

A Reader's Guide to the Nineteenth-Century English Novel lends perspective to the best-loved novels of Dickens, Hardy, Austen, Brontë, Thackeray, Eliot, and Trollope. Equipped with a knowledge of such nuances as the difference between a vicar and a rector, or whether the untitled gentleman or the impoverished baronet makes the more prestigious dinner guest, the American reader is truly able to enjoy the humor, irony, and pathos offered by the Victorian novel.

Contents

“Acknowledgments

Introduction

1Class and Money

2Titles and the Peerage

3The Church of England

4Evangelicalism and the Dissenting Religions

5Education

6The Professions

7Marriage

8Government and Reform

9The English Courts and Prisons

10Censorship

11The Serial Mode of Publication

12Illustrations and the Idea of Realism

Conclusion: American Readers, English Novels

Notes

Bibliographic Note

Index”

Tags: History, Literature, 19CEngland

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