Series Information:
The New Critical Idiom

Coming to prominence with the nineteenth-century novel, literary realism has most often been associated with the insistence that art cannot turn away from the more sordid and harsh aspects of human existence. However, because realism is unavoidably tied up with the gnarly concept of 'reality' and 'the real', it has been one of the most widely debated terms in the New Critical Idiom series.
This volume offers a clear, reader-friendly guide to debates around realism, examining:
*ideas of realism in nineteenth-century French and British fiction
*the twentieth-century formalist reaction against literature's status as 'truth'
*realism as a democratic tool, or utopian form.
This volume is vital reading for any student of literature, in particular those working on the realist novel.

Covers the Victorian period, bringing together a range of texts reflecting the role of women in an era when their cultural influence broadened as science, religious doubt, and the idea of the nation evolved as systems of cultural representation.

Covers the Victorian period, bringing together a range of texts reflecting the role of women in an era when their cultural influence broadened as science, religious doubt, and the idea of the nation evolved as systems of cultural representation.

Covers the Victorian period, bringing together a range of texts reflecting the role of women in an era when their cultural influence broadened as science, religious doubt, and the idea of the nation evolved as systems of cultural representation.

Covers the Victorian period, bringing together a range of texts reflecting the role of women in an era when their cultural influence broadened as science, religious doubt, and the idea of the nation evolved as systems of cultural representation.

Covers the Victorian period, bringing together a range of texts reflecting the role of women in an era when their cultural influence broadened as science, religious doubt, and the idea of the nation evolved as systems of cultural representation.

Covers the Victorian period, bringing together a range of texts reflecting the role of women in an era when their cultural influence broadened as science, religious doubt, and the idea of the nation evolved as systems of cultural representation.

This collection aims to give a chronological insight into the evolution of conduct literature, from its early roots in the Renaissance period through to the dramatically different role that women played at the emergence of the 20th century. The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books. Social and literary historians recognise the 1790s as a moment of political crisis and turbulence in British history: the intense reactions in Britain to increasing revolutionary violence in France politicised almost every aspect of cultural life. At the centre of discursive hostilities was the opposition between sentimentality, on the one hand, and rationality, on the other. Two of the most important literary forms utilised for expressing these polemics were novels and treatises on education, as well as conduct writing. Conduct Literature for Women IV, 1770-1830 makes available this body of writing, which has been less well studied in respect to the war of ideas than the former two.

This collection aims to give a chronological insight into the evolution of conduct literature, from its early roots in the Renaissance period through to the dramatically different role that women played at the emergence of the 20th century. The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books. Social and literary historians recognise the 1790s as a moment of political crisis and turbulence in British history: the intense reactions in Britain to increasing revolutionary violence in France politicised almost every aspect of cultural life. At the centre of discursive hostilities was the opposition between sentimentality, on the one hand, and rationality, on the other. Two of the most important literary forms utilised for expressing these polemics were novels and treatises on education, as well as conduct writing. Conduct Literature for Women IV, 1770-1830 makes available this body of writing, which has been less well studied in respect to the war of ideas than the former two.

This collection aims to give a chronological insight into the evolution of conduct literature, from its early roots in the Renaissance period through to the dramatically different role that women played at the emergence of the 20th century. The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books. Social and literary historians recognise the 1790s as a moment of political crisis and turbulence in British history: the intense reactions in Britain to increasing revolutionary violence in France politicised almost every aspect of cultural life. At the centre of discursive hostilities was the opposition between sentimentality, on the one hand, and rationality, on the other. Two of the most important literary forms utilised for expressing these polemics were novels and treatises on education, as well as conduct writing. Conduct Literature for Women IV, 1770-1830 makes available this body of writing, which has been less well studied in respect to the war of ideas than the former two.

This collection aims to give a chronological insight into the evolution of conduct literature, from its early roots in the Renaissance period through to the dramatically different role that women played at the emergence of the 20th century. The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books. Social and literary historians recognise the 1790s as a moment of political crisis and turbulence in British history: the intense reactions in Britain to increasing revolutionary violence in France politicised almost every aspect of cultural life. At the centre of discursive hostilities was the opposition between sentimentality, on the one hand, and rationality, on the other. Two of the most important literary forms utilised for expressing these polemics were novels and treatises on education, as well as conduct writing. Conduct Literature for Women IV, 1770-1830 makes available this body of writing, which has been less well studied in respect to the war of ideas than the former two.

Social and literary historians recognise the 1790s as a moment of political crisis and turbulence in British history: the intense reactions in Britain to increasing revolutionary violence in France politicised almost every aspect of cultural life. The public sphere became the battleground of what Marilyn Butler terms 'the war of ideas'. At the centre of these discursive hostilities was the opposition between sentimentality, on the one hand, and rationality, on the other. Inextricably interlinked with these contrary values were notions of gender identity and class ideology. There was, however, no defining stabilisation of political or gender positions around the two values of sentiment and reason. Two of the most important literary forms utilised for expressing these discursive polemics were novels and treatises on education. A third equally significant and closely-related genre was that of conduct writing. Conduct Literature for Women IV, 1770-1830 makes available this body of writing, which has been less well studied in respect to the war of ideas than the former two.Yet, as the texts collected in this edition demonstrate, conduct writing was influentially engaged at the heart of the controversies that characterised the British public sphere during the critical decades across the turn of the century. Furthermore, looking at this body of texts from the wider time span of 1770 to 1830 allows for a clearer understanding of the shifting and ambiguous directions of opinion and debate than that afforded by a more narrow focus upon the 1790s.

This collection aims to give a chronological insight into the evolution of conduct literature, from its early roots in the Renaissance period through to the dramatically different role that women played at the emergence of the 20th century. The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books. Social and literary historians recognise the 1790s as a moment of political crisis and turbulence in British history: the intense reactions in Britain to increasing revolutionary violence in France politicised almost every aspect of cultural life. At the centre of discursive hostilities was the opposition between sentimentality, on the one hand, and rationality, on the other. Two of the most important literary forms utilised for expressing these polemics were novels and treatises on education, as well as conduct writing. Conduct Literature for Women IV, 1770-1830 makes available this body of writing, which has been less well studied in respect to the war of ideas than the former two.

This collection aims to give a chronological insight into the evolution of conduct literature, from its early roots in the Renaissance period through to the dramatically different role that women played at the emergence of the 20th century. The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books. Social and literary historians recognise the 1790s as a moment of political crisis and turbulence in British history: the intense reactions in Britain to increasing revolutionary violence in France politicised almost every aspect of cultural life. At the centre of discursive hostilities was the opposition between sentimentality, on the one hand, and rationality, on the other. Two of the most important literary forms utilised for expressing these polemics were novels and treatises on education, as well as conduct writing. Conduct Literature for Women IV, 1770-1830 makes available this body of writing, which has been less well studied in respect to the war of ideas than the former two.

Academic - Women's Studies - Eighteenth-Century Studies - History - Literature; The roles and responsibilities of the individual woman, and an entire class, are discussed and developed within these texts. This set will be of interest to students of eighteenth-century culture, women's writing and history. Continuing our successful series Conduct Literature for Women, we move into the eighteenth century. The emphasis shifts away from courtly etiquette to a more domestic focus, reflecting the growth of a new middle class in English society. The roles and responsibilities of the individual woman, and an entire class, are discussed and developed within these texts. This increasing concern with the practicalities of private life associates the conduct genre with another major literary development of the age, the realist novel. women's writing and history. The advice included takes the shape of sermons, poems and cookery books, as well as narratives such as The Polite Lady (1760) which is written as a series of letters between a mother and daughter. Contributions are by male and female authors in a broad variety of styles and genres, and the texts were often widely influential and the subject of public and literary debate. None of the texts are available in any other modern edition

The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books.

The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books.

The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books.

The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books.

The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books.

The material presented in this six-volume set moves away from courtly etiquette, adopting a more middle-class, domestic focus, and includes facsimile reproductions of sermons, poems, narratives and cookery books.

Who would have expected Jane Austen to be up-to-date on gun technology or Virginia Woolf to recognise the class politics of plumbing? Austen and Woolf are materialists, this book argues. 'Things' in their novels give us entry into some of the most contentious issues of the day. This wholly materialist understanding produces worldly realism, an experimental writing practice which asserts egalitarian continuity between people, things and the physical world. This radical redistribution of the importance of material objects and biological existence, challenges the traditional idealist hierarchy of mind over matter that has justified gender, class and race subordination. Entering their writing careers at the critical moments of the French Revolution and the First World War respectively, and sharing a political inheritance of Scottish Enlightenment scepticism, Austen's and Woolf's rigorous critiques of the dangers of mental vision unchecked by facts is more timely than ever in the current world dominated by fundamentalist neo-liberal, religious and nationalist belief systems. Key Features The book uses close readings from Sense and Sensibility, Mrs Dalloway, Emma, The Waves, Persuasion and The Years to demonstrate the materialist sensibilities of Austen and Woolf It traces the anti-individualism of their view of self and consciousness as deriving from embodied experience Each chapter foregrounds the constitutive interrelationship of things, people, social and physical worlds The book reconceptualises a progressive view of realism - worldly realism - drawing upon Jacques Ranciere's thesis that a new democratic aesthetic regime is inaugurated around the end of the eighteenth century

Wives and Daughters, generally thought to be Elizabeth Gaskell's finest, is a departure from her earlier 'social' fiction, such as Mary Barton and North and South.

Set in English society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Wives and Daughters centres on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries, a new step-sister enters Molly's quiet life - loveable, but worldly and troubling, Cynthia. The narrative traces the development of the two girls into womanhood within the gossiping and watchful society of Hollingford.

Wives and Daughters is far more than a nostalgic evocation of village life; it offers an ironic critique of mid-Victorian society. 'No nineteenth-century novel contains a more devastating rejection than this of the Victorian male assumption of moral authority', writes Pam Morris in her introduction to this new edition, in which she explores the novel's main themes - the role of women, Darwinism and the concept of Englishness - and its literary and social context.