First published in 2005, this book argues that, due to political and ideological shifts in the last decades of the nineteenth century a new depiction of social class was possible in the English novel. Late-century writers such as Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells question the middle-class Victorian views of class that had dominated the novel for decades through the disruption of traditional novelistic conventions. With reference to relevant maps, journalism, artwork, photography and specific historical events, this book contextualizes novels by these writers within their historical moment. In doing so, it illuminates the relationship between fiction and history in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century fiction. This book will be of interest to those studying late nineteenth-century literature and history.

With cheaper publishing costs and the explosion of periodical publishing, the influence of New World travel narratives was greater during the nineteenth century than ever before, as they offered an understanding not only of America through British eyes, but also a lens though which nineteenth-century Britain could view itself. Despite the differences in purpose and method, the writers and artists discussed in Nineteenth-Century British Travelers in the New World-from Fanny Wright arriving in America in 1818 to the return of Henry James in 1904, and including Charles Dickens, Frances Trollope, Isabella Bird, Fanny Kemble, Harriet Martineau, and Robert Louis Stevenson among others, as well as artists such as Eyre Crowe-all contributed to the continued building of America as a construct for audiences at home. These travelers' stories and images thus presented an idea of America over which Britons could crow about their own supposed sophistication, and a democratic model through which to posit their own future, all of which suggests the importance of transatlantic travel writing and the 'idea of America' to nineteenth-century Britain.

With cheaper publishing costs and the explosion of periodical publishing, the influence of New World travel narratives was greater during the nineteenth century than ever before, as they offered an understanding not only of America through British eyes, but also a lens though which nineteenth-century Britain could view itself. Despite the differences in purpose and method, the writers and artists discussed in Nineteenth-Century British Travelers in the New World-from Fanny Wright arriving in America in 1818 to the return of Henry James in 1904, and including Charles Dickens, Frances Trollope, Isabella Bird, Fanny Kemble, Harriet Martineau, and Robert Louis Stevenson among others, as well as artists such as Eyre Crowe-all contributed to the continued building of America as a construct for audiences at home. These travelers' stories and images thus presented an idea of America over which Britons could crow about their own supposed sophistication, and a democratic model through which to posit their own future, all of which suggests the importance of transatlantic travel writing and the 'idea of America' to nineteenth-century Britain.

First published in 2005, this book argues that, due to political and ideological shifts in the last decades of the nineteenth century a new depiction of social class was possible in the English novel. Late-century writers such as Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells question the middle-class Victorian views of class that had dominated the novel for decades through the disruption of traditional novelistic conventions. With reference to relevant maps, journalism, artwork, photography and specific historical events, this book contextualizes novels by these writers within their historical moment. In doing so, it illuminates the relationship between fiction and history in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century fiction. This book will be of interest to those studying late nineteenth-century literature and history.