Books in the Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture series

Investigating links between literature, science, psychology, religion, law, and ethics, this study re-evaluates nineteenth-century understandings of what it means to be human. Leading scholars argue for the centrality of the idea of the human within the works of the Bronte sisters, offering new insight on their writing and cultural contexts.

This study focuses on the depictions of malaria in nineteenth-century and postcolonial fiction of writers such as Charles Dickens, Henry James, H. Rider Haggard, and Rudyard Kipling amongst others. It also examines the multivalent and subversive potential of the disease in postcolonial literature of writers such as Amitav Ghosh and Derek Walcott.

Positive thinking is good for you. Analysing nineteenth-century literature through the pervading lens of New Thought, which foreshadowed concepts of twentieth-century popular psychology, this volume uncovers unnoticed aspects of canonical works and classic children's literature to reveal a new area of academic inquiry for scholars and students.

This book investigates the often surprising intersections and overlaps between three infrequently related fields: studies of poetry, studies of media, and studies of the body. At these intersections a neglected nineteenth-century theory of poetry becomes visible, one that imagines the body as a reproductive medium for poetry.

This book explores the failure of the Romantic critique of political economy by following changing conceptions of idleness and aesthetic consciousness from Shelley to Freud. Richard Adelman delivers an innovative study of cultural politics between 1815 and 1900 that shines new light on the complex legacy of Romantic thought.

Investigating links between literature, science, psychology, religion, law, and ethics, this study re-evaluates nineteenth-century understandings of what it means to be human. Leading scholars argue for the centrality of the idea of the human within the works of the Bronte sisters, offering new insight on their writing and cultural contexts.

Elegantly and persuasively argues that natural theology was an important presence, not only in the natural histories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also in the novels of the same period. Will appeal to students and scholars of nineteenth-century literature and historians of science.

Anna Feuerstein offers innovative readings of the politics of animal characters in the Victorian novel, and shows the limitations of liberalism as a framework for animal rights. This book will appeal to scholars and students interested in Victorian literature and culture, and the representation of animals in literature.

This book argues that the realist novel compresses the duration of aging into descriptive intervals, constructing senescence as a shameful event to be hidden. It will appeal to students and researchers of nineteenth-century literature and culture, the Victorian novel and to those with an interest in representations of age in literature.

Synthesizing music, literature and theory, Fraser Riddell reveals the importance of music in emergent queer identities at the fin de siecle. Illuminating for both students and researchers of the period, his compelling arguments for music's queer agency will fascinate anyone interested in Aestheticism, Decadence and the Bloomsbury Group.

Revealing the web of mutual influences between nineteenth-century scientific and cultural discourses of appearance, Mimicry and Display in Victorian Literary Culture argues that Victorian science and culture biologized appearance, reimagining imitation, concealment and self-presentation as evolutionary adaptations. Exploring how studies of animal crypsis and visibility drew on artistic theory and techniques to reconceptualise nature as a realm of signs and interpretation, Abberley shows that in turn, this science complicated religious views of nature as a text of divine meanings, inspiring literary authors to rethink human appearances and perceptions through a Darwinian lens. Providing fresh insights into writers from Alfred Russel Wallace and Thomas Hardy to Oscar Wilde and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Abberley reveals how the biology of appearance generated new understandings of deception, identity and creativity; reacted upon narrative forms such as crime fiction and the pastoral; and infused the rhetoric of cultural criticism and political activism.

This book explores how Victorian women readers strategically identified with literature to defy stereotypes and inspire their action and creativity. Engaging with nineteenth-century English literature and culture, the book engages with theories and histories of reading that appeal to literary scholars and educators.