In recent years George Herbert's poetry has been analyzed by some of our most distinguished literary critics. Offering close readings of central poems, and insights derived from contemporary literary theory, Barbara Harman takes her place in their company.

She begins by surveying the critical tradition on Herbert's work in our century--from George Herbert Palmer to Stanley Fish. In this penetrating assessment Harman explores the relationship between critical practice and belief.

The impulse toward self-representation is, she argues, a powerful one in Herbert's work, and it is also an impulse thwarted and redesigned in extraordinary ways. In poems Harman calls fictions of coherence and "chronicles of dissolution," speakers both protect and dismantle their own narratives, and because they do they raise questions about the values we attach to stories and about the difficulties we undergo when stories fail to represent us in traditional ways.

This text contains essays on writers from the 1840s to the 1890s, and includes well-known writers such as Anne Bronte, Wilkie Collins, and Bram Stoker, as well as lesser known writers such as Geraldine Jewsbury, Charles Reade, Margaret Oliphant, George Moore, Sarah Grand and Mary Ward. The contributors explore important thematic concerns such as the relationship between private and public realms, gender and social class, sexuality and the marketplace, and male and female cultural identity.

Victorian literature has been an important critical focus for feminist scholarship, but feminist criticism has also established its own canon of central authors-most frequently focusing on the rich accomplishments of Emily Bront', Charlotte Bront', and George Eliot, and the disappointments of Charles Dickens and Henry James. This collection of essays expands the canon to include works not frequently accorded attention either in literary criticism broadly conceived, or in feminist literary scholarship.
The book includes essays on writers from the 1840s to the 1890s, investigating some authors in whom readers are already interested (Anne Bront', Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker), and those to whom they wish to gain access (Geraldine Jewsbury, Charles Reade, Margaret Oliphant, George Moore, Sarah Grand, Mary Ward, and others). The essays explore important thematic concerns: the relation between private and public realms, gender and social class, sexuality and the marketplace, and male and female cultural identity.
This collection facilitates interpretation of key underread texts for scholars who seek new information and insights. Additionally, the biographical headnote and brief bibliographic survey that accompany each essay are helpful to students and teachers of 19th-century literature, feminist literature and criticism, and cultural studies. Most importantly, the volume offers a richer conception of 19th-century literature and thus contributes both to literary history and classroom instruction.

In this groundbreaking book, Barbara Leah Harman convincingly establishes a new category in Victorian fiction: the feminine political novel. By studying Victorian female protagonists who participate in the public universe conventionally occupied by men, she is able to reassess the public realm as the site of noble and meaningful action for women in Victorian England.