The Oxford History of the Novel in English
Volume 3: The Nineteenth-Century Novel 1820-1880
Oxford History of the Novel in English Series

The Oxford History of the Novel in English is a 12-volume series presenting a comprehensive, global, and up-to-date history of English-language prose fiction and written by a large, international team of scholars. The series is concerned with novels as a whole, not just the 'literary' novel, and each volume includes chapters on the processes of production, distribution, and reception, and on popular fiction and the fictional sub-genres, as well as outlining the work of major novelists, movements, traditions, and tendencies. Volume 3, The Nineteenth-Century Novel 1820-1800 charts one of the most significant and exciting periods in the history of the genre. Beginning with the decade in which Scott's work helped inaugurate the three-volume novel, and in which many narrative genres, conventions, and preoccupations associated with Victorian fiction first emerged, it traces how these forms developed and changed in the mid nineteenth century, as the novel became established at the centre of British national culture. The volume includes sections on book history, on major authors, and on the varieties of fiction and range of narrative modes during the period. It also features essays on theories of the novel, and on the novel's relationship to other aesthetic forms. Volume 3 also emphasizes the wider cultural role and significance of the novel during the period, including its impact on ideas of place and nation, as well as its intervention in political, scientific, and intellectual contexts.

Acknowledgments. List of Contributors. List of Illustrations. List of Tables. General Editor's Preface. Introduction. Editorial Note. Note on British Currency before Decimalization. Part I: Novelists, Readers, and the Fiction Industry. 1. The Publishing Industry. 2. Readers and Reading Practices. 3. The Professionalization of Authorship. Part II: Varieties and Genres. 4. The Historical Novel. 5. Gothic Fictions in the Nineteenth Century. 6. The English Bildungsroman. 7. The Silver Fork Novel. 8. The Newgate Novel. 9. The Sensation Novel. 10. Children's Fiction. 11. The Domestic Novel. Part III: Major Authors in Context. 12. Charles Dickens: The Novelist as Public Figure. 13. The Brontes and the Transformations of Romanticism. 14. George Eliot and Intellectual Culture. Part IV: Narrative Structures and Strategies. 15. Short Fiction and the Novel. 16. Multiple Narrators and Multiple Plots. 17. Addressing the Reader: The Autobiographical Voice. 18. Realism and Theories of the Novel. 19. Theatricality and the Novel. 20. Aesthetic Theories. Part V: The Nation and its Boundaries. 21. Modernization and the Organic Society. 22. Place, Region, and Migration. 23. The Novel and Empire. 24. Nationalism and National Identities. 25. International Influences. Part VI: Contemporary Contexts. 26. Radicalism and Reform. 27. Parliament and the State. 28. Science and the Novel. 29. Religion and the Novel. 30. Psychology and the Idea of Character. 31. Gender Identities and Relationships. Bibliography.

John Kucich is a Professor of English at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He has written numerous books and essays on nineteenth-century literature and culture. His publications include Excess and Restraint in the Novels of Charles Dickens (Georgia, 1981), Repression in Victorian Fiction: Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Charles Dickens (California, 1987), The Power of Lies: Transgression in Victorian Fiction (Cornell, 1994), and Imperial Masochism: British Fiction, Fantasy, and Social Class (Princeton, 2007). He has also edited, with Dianne F. Sadoff, Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century (Minnesota, 2000). Jenny Bourne Taylor is a Professor of English at the University of Sussex. She has written widely on nineteenth-century literature and culture. Her publication include (with Sally Shuttleworth) Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts (Clarendon, 1998), and ed., with Margot Finn and Michael Lobban Legitimacy and Illegitimacy in Law, Literature and History (Palgrave, 2010).