This set of 42 volumes, originally published between 1965 and 2009, are authored by renowned international scholars in the field of nineteenth century literature. They explore a variety of authors such as Dickens, Hardy, Bronte, Austen, Gaskell, Zola, Meredith, Eliot, Gissing, Hawthorne, James and Wharton. The titles also examine a wide range of themes including gender, class, religion, politics, philosophy and music.

First published in 1996, The William Makepeace Thackeray Library is a collection of texts written by and about the novelist, which provide an insight into his life and works beyond his major novels such as Vanity Fair. It begins with some of Thackeray's lesser-known journalistic work and travel writings and moves on to key works written about the author in the second half of the 19th century and at the turn of the 20th century. Each volume begins with an informative introduction by Richard Pearson, providing a brief analysis of each text and presenting the context in which it was written. This set will be of keen interest to those studying William Thackeray and nineteenth-century literature more broadly.

Steampunk is more than a fandom, a literary genre, or an aesthetic. It is a research methodology turning history inside out to search for alternatives to the progressive technological boosterism sold to us by Silicon Valley. This book turns to steampunk's quirky temporalities to embrace diverse genealogies of the digital humanities and to unite their methodologies with nineteenth-century literature and media archaeology. The result is nineteenth-century digital humanities, a retrofuturist approach in which readings of steampunk novels like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine and Ken Liu's The Grace of Kings collide with nineteenth-century technological histories like Charles Babbage's use of the difference engine to enhance worker productivity and Isabella Bird's spirit photography of alternate history China. Along the way, Steampunk and Nineteenth-Century Digital Humanities considers steampunk as a public form of digital humanities scholarship and activism, examining projects like Kinetic Steam Works's reconstruction of Henri Giffard's 1852 steam-powered airship, Jake von Slatt's use of James Wimshurst's 1880 designs to create an electric influence machine, and the queer steampunk activism of fans appearing at conventions around the globe. Steampunk as a digital humanities practice of repurposing reacts to the growing sense of multiple non-human temporalities mediating our human histories: microtemporal electricities flowing through our computer circuits, mechanical oscillations marking our work days, geological stratifications and cosmic drifts extending time into the millions and billions of years. Excavating the entangled, anachronistic layers of steampunk practice from video games like Bioshock Infinite to marine trash floating off the shore of Los Angeles and repurposed by media artist Claudio Garzon into steampunk submarines, Steampunk and Nineteenth-Century Digital Humanities uncovers the various technological temporalities and multicultural retrofutures illuminating many alternate histories of the digital humanities.

First published in 1979, this collection of sixty-three essays on the novel drawn from ten periodicals demonstrates the primary concerns of those discussing the nature and purpose of prose fiction in the period from 1830 to 1850. The essays reflect what was thought and said about the art of fiction and reveal what journalists of these periodicals thought were the most urgent critical concerns facing the working reviewer. Including an introduction which assesses the issues raised by the best periodicals at the time, this anthology is designed to provide students of Victorian fiction and critical theory with a collection of essays on the art of fiction in a convenient and durable form.

First published in 1979, this collection of thirty-three essays on the novel drawn from thirteen periodicals demonstrates the primary concerns of those discussing the nature and purpose of prose fiction in the period from 1851 to 1869. The essays reflect what was thought and said about the art of fiction and reveal what journalists of these periodicals thought were the most urgent critical concerns facing the working reviewer. This volume includes work by major mid-century reviewers such as David Masson, George Henry Lewes, Walter Bagehot, William Caldwell Roscoe, Richard Holt Hutton and Leslie Stephen. Including an introduction which assesses the issues raised by the best periodicals at the time, this anthology is designed to provide students of Victorian fiction and critical theory with a collection of essays on the art of fiction in a convenient and durable form.

This set reissues 4 books on Victorian poetry originally published between 1966 and 2003. The volumes focus predominantly on the works of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. This set will be of particular interest to students of English literature.

An enhanced exam section: expert guidance on approaching exam questions, writing high-quality responses and using critical interpretations, plus practice tasks and annotated sample answer extracts. Key skills covered: focused tasks to develop your analysis and understanding, plus regular study tips, revision questions and progress checks to track your learning. The most in-depth analysis: detailed text summaries and extract analysis to in-depth discussion of characters, themes, language, contexts and criticism, all helping you to succeed.

This critical study explores the relationship between Hopkins' poetic art and his philosophy and shows why Hopkins' poetry has endured. Sean Sheehan is the author of a study of anarchism and of a guide to Wittgenstein.

Percy Shelley is widely considered one of the most important Romantic poets of the 19th Century and was a key influence on the Victorian and pre-Raphaelite poets in the century following his death in 1822. However, for many years his writing was largely ignored in the mainstream due to the radical politics he espoused and it is only in relatively recent times he has become universally admired. Routledge Library Editions: Percy Shelley collects a broad range of scholarship ranging from examinations of Shelley's style and political intentions to an assessment of his impact on the broader Romantic Movement. This set reissues 4 books on Percy Shelley originally published between 1945 and 2009 and will be of interest to students of literature and literary history.

First published in 1982, Images of Crisis explores the premise that literature and art exploit various images to present culturally prevalent ideas, and thus create their own form of iconology. George Landow shows how the tumultuous history of the past two hundred years has resulted in a plethora of metaphors associated with moments of human crisis. Avalanches and volcanoes emerge as focal images in an aesthetic that concerns itself increasingly with the vulnerability of humanity. However, it is in the transformation of traditional religious images that the ideas of the vacant universe are most dramatically presented. Associated with this central idea are ironic transformations of other images that formerly had been associated with Christianity as paradigms of belief: the journey of Odysseus, the rainbow of the Covenant and Robinson Crusoe. Combining close textual analysis with a theory of literary iconology, this fascinating reissue will be of particular value to students with an interest in literary images, and literary and cultural history.

Victorian Literature: Criticism and Debates offers a comprehensive and critically engaging introduction to the study of Victorian literature and addresses the most popular and vibrant topics in the field today. Separated into twelve sections, this anthology investigates issues as diverse as neo-formalism, sensationalism, religion, evolution, psychology, gender and sexuality, colonialism, imperialism, and economics. Each section contains at least three classic essays from leading scholars which offer a variety of approaches and theories from the liveliest areas of current criticism and debate in the field. Each section concludes with a newly written essay from a subject expert that reflects on this work and looks forward to new directions. A sign-posted introduction to the key critical contributions in Victorian studies from the past twenty-five years sets the reader on their path. Providing both the essential criticism along with clear introductions and analysis, this book is the perfect guide for students and scholars of Victorian literature.

First published in 1990. The book surveys of the development of German theatre from a market sideshow into an important element of cultural life and political expression. It examines Schiller as 'theatre poet' at Mannheim, Goethe's work as director of the court theatre at Weimar, and then traces the rapid commercial decline that made it difficult for Kleist and impossible for Buchner to see their plays staged in their own lifetime. Four representative texts are analysed: Schiller's The Robbers, Goethe's Iphigenia on Tauris, Kleist's The Prince of Homburg, and Buchner's Woyzeck. This title will be of interest to students of theatre and German literature.

This book provides an analytical understanding of some of Tagore's most contested and celebrated works and ideas. It reflects on his critique of nationalism, aesthetic worldview, and the idea of 'surplus in man' underlying his life and works. It discusses the creative notion of surplus that stands not for 'profit' or 'value', but for celebrating human beings' continuous quest for reaching out beyond one's limits. It highlights, among other themes, how the idea of being 'Indian' involves stages of evolution through a complex matrix of ideals, values and actions-cultural, historical, literary and ideological. Examining the notion of the 'universal', contemporary scholars come together in this volume to show how 'surplus in man' is generated over the life of concrete particulars through creativity. The work brings forth a social scientific account of Tagore's thoughts and critically reconstructs many of his epochal ideas. Lucid in analysis and bolstered with historical reflection, this book will be a major intervention in understanding Tagore's works and its relevance for the contemporary human and social sciences. It will interest scholars and researchers of philosophy, literature and cultural studies.

The practice of poetry in the Victorian period was characterised by an extreme diversity of styles, preoccupations and subject-matter. This anthology attempts to draw out some of the main focuses of interest in the Victorian poet. No Victorian poet produced an overall theory of poetry, yet all accepted it as a natural vehicle of expression, and for some subjects, in particular sexuality, the only literary mode. Indeed, the sexual question was made even more acute by the sudden phenomenon of the 'poetess', and the relation of poetry to gender raised interesting new critical questions. At the same time, the cultural role of the poet came under increasing debate: Victorian poetry was the first contemporary poetry to be studied. This selection of central texts illustrates these pressures on the Victorian practice of poetry, and the introductory remarks suggest ways in which theory can be related to the understanding key poems themselves.

Edward Carpenter: In Appreciation, first published in 1931, presents a collection of tributes to and reminiscences about the renowned socialist poet, pioneering gay rights activist, environmentalist and political thinker. Embroiled in controversy with prominent figures of all political persuasions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Carpenter's vision of sexual freedom, democracy and an end to commercialism was maintained with integrity over the course of his whole life. These portraits and anecdotes testify to a man of both determination and warmth, whose writings, though inspirational for many up to the 1960s, are seldom read today.

First published in 1983, this book explores a number of avenues of critical thinking about Joseph Conrad, showing him as an author deeply concerned with humankind's ethical motivation and its relationship with the ideas of evolution current in his day. Allan Hunter establishes Conrad's detailed knowledge of the leading evolutionary arguments of the period and the main questions posed: were ethics God-given or were morals merely an evolved attribute? His novels are shown as debates with, and extensions of, the theories of Huxley, Darwin, Carlyle, Spencer, Lombroso and others on the nature of humanity and altruism.

This bibliography, first published in 1989, brings together a number of reviews of the early Dickens which appeared in contemporary magazines, newspapers, and quarterlies during the eight years between 1833 and 1841. The chronological arrangement of reviews, both of Dickens and others, forms the core of this study. This book is perfect for those studying Dickens and his works in-depth.

This book focuses on an exciting moment in the history of Anglo-German literary exchange in the Romantic period, the moment of George Gordon Byron's and Percy Bysshe Shelley's interrelated encounters with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's seminal dramatic poem, Faust.

Ruskin, the great Victorian critics of art and society, had an enormous influence on his age and our own. A highly successful propagandist for the arts, he did much both to popularize high art and to bring it to the masses. A brilliant theorist and practical critics of realism, he also produced the finest nineteenth-century discussions of fantasy, the grotesque, and pictorial symbolism. Most who have written about this outstanding Victorian polymath have approached him either as literary critics or as art historians. In this book, which was first published in 1985, George P. Landow provides a more balanced view and offers a strikingly new approach which reveals that Ruskin wrote throughout his career as an interpreter, an exegete. His interpretations covered many fields of human experience and endeavour, not only paintings, poems, and buildings but also contemporary social issues, such as the discontent of the working classes.

A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century, first published in 1926, presents the great artistic and literary innovations of the Romantic movement according to an often overlooked and unacknowledged definition of 'Romanticism', which is of particular relevance in the consideration of the English Romantic spirit: pertaining to the style of the Christian and popular literature of the Middle Ages. The author recapitulates the key contributions of English poets - including Scott, Coleridge and Keats - in light of their recovery of certain themes and leitmotifs that clearly distinguish the Romantic style. In addition, the development of the Romantic movement in France and Germany is given some attention, and the specific tendencies of their respective approaches is considered in relation to England. The emergence of the Pre-Raphaelites is investigated, and a tentative evaluation of the progress of English Romanticism in the nineteenth century is offered.

First published in 1984, this title examines the development of a special rhetoric in Dickens work, which, by using grotesque effects, challenged the complacency of his middle-class Victorian readers. The study begins by exploring definitions of the grotesque and moves on to look at three key aspects that particularly impacted on Dickens imagination: popular theatre (especially pantomime), caricature, and the tradition of the Gothic novel. Michael Hollington traces the development of Dickens application of the grotesque from his early work to his late novels, showing how its use becomes more subtle. Hollington s title greatly enhances our appreciation of Dickens technique, showing the skill with which he used the grotesque to undermine stereotyped responses and encourage his readership to challenge their context. "

First published in 1984, this biography gives an account of Jonathan Swift s political ideas and provides a critical commentary on his major works. With its emphasis on Swift as a political writer, the title offers a revision of the prevailing view of Swift s politics and its application in the study of his works. Alan Downie argues that in terms of the party politics of the day Swift is neither a Whig nor Tory. Swift thought of himself as an Old Whig, and said he was of the old Whig principles, without the modern articles and refinements . Downie shows how Swift s writings consistently make political points about society s deviation from an ideal. As Swift s views on morality, religion and politics are so closely linked, an understanding of his political ideas is vital; this reissue provides a detailed analysis of this aspect of Swift s writings and views, and as such will be of great interest to any students researching his satire. "

This book argues that Walter Pater and Algernon Swinburne draw upon the legacy of Romantic Hellenism in order to explore the possibilities of a secular model of enchantment and to complicate the common Victorian assumption that secularisation was a story about rationality, disillusionment, and loss.

In his autobiography, Hans Christian Andersen gives a vivid account of the Danish provincial life he knew as a child, as well as life in Danish aristocratic circles and in European high society. He met all the leading authors and composers and was one of the most widely travelled writers of his day.

The study of Ruskin's work and influence is now a feature of several critical disciplines. New Approaches to Ruskin, first published in 1981, reflects this, gathering some of the most distinguished writers on Ruskin and joining them with others who have undertaken significant research in the field of Ruskin studies. The authors were all specially commissioned for this volume and were chosen to represent as wide a variety of approaches as possible to this key figure of nineteenth-century culture. This book is ideal for students of art history.