Books in the Writing and Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century series

In the 120 years since the publication of his final poetry collection, Decorations: In Verse and Prose (1899), Ernest Dowson has become something of a Decadent legend, much anthologized and referenced in almost every study of English Decadent literature, but still is considered a minor figure of the fin de siècle. He is, in fact, an important intermediary between late nineteenth-century Decadence and literary Modernism. This first collection of critical essays devoted solely to Dowson draws him out of the shadows and acknowledges his talent and legacy. The essays in this volume by established and emergent Dowson scholars offer new perspectives on some of the most noteworthy aspects of Dowson's oeuvre, including Catholicism and Paganism, desire and sexuality, space and place, his relationships with Decadent contemporaries including Paul Verlaine and Aubrey Beardsley, and his poetic resonance in twentieth-century literature and music.

This book is the first full-length critical account of the life and work of Constance Naden, a unique visionary within Victorian literature and science. Her poetry, philosophy and scientific studies are examined in this thought-provoking contribution to the study of nineteenth-century intellectual culture.

This collection offers new perspectives on the connections between politics, identity and representation in art and poetry in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain and Europe. A diverse selection of contributions explore the reciprocal influence of political, religious, literary and artistic movements of the time.

This new study provides fresh readings of Thomas Hardy's work and illuminates the social and cultural history of dress in the nineteenth century. The book argues that Hardy had a more detailed and acute understanding of the importance of dress in forming and regulating personal identity and social relations than any other writer of his time. Structured thematically, it takes into account both nineteenth-century and modern theoretical approaches to the significance of what we wear. The author gives an extended analysis of individual works by Hardy, showing, for example, that A Pair of Blue Eyes is central to the study of the function of clothing in the expression and perception of sexuality. The Hand of Ethelberta, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and The Woodlanders are examined in order to show the extent to which dress obscures or reveals the nature of the self. Hardy's other novels, as well as the short stories and poems, are used to confirm the centrality of dress and clothing in Hardy's work. The book also raises issues such as the gendering of dress, cross-dressing, work clothes and working with clothes, dress and the environment, the symbolism of colour in clothes, and the dress conventions relating to death.

This is the first book-length study of literary censorship in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. While in recent years the aesthetics and politics of British Modernism have been re-evaluated and the concept and function of censorship redefined, Modernism's privileged status in the struggle against and ultimate defeat of censorship remains largely unquestioned. This book contests that the vital role played by Realist writers in the battle against censorship and the dominant sexual ideologies that bolstered it has been significantly underestimated. It contends that many Realist writers not only produced transgressive sexual representations within the confines of an existent culture of censorship, but also reflexively incorporated themes and issues of censorship into their fiction. Through its focus on censorship, the book explores a number of narratives to reveal their complex sexual politics and show how texts that ostensibly oppose traditional morality can also reinforce dominant sexual ideologies in new paradigms of scientific rationality. Moreover, reading these fictions through the lens of censorship offers fresh insights into the novels and short stories of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.

William Morris's last romances are strikingly original stories written in his final years, but they remain relatively neglected in both Morris studies and nineteenth-century literary studies. This book provides a full-length critical account of these works and their essential role in promoting the continuing importance of Morris's ideas. Approaching these romances through the concept of wonder, this book provides a new way of understanding their relevance to his writings on art and architecture, nature and the environment, and politics and Socialism. It establishes the integral connection between the romances and Morris's diverse cultural, social and political interests and activities, suggesting ways in which we might understand these tales as a culmination of Morris's thought and practice. Through a comprehensive analysis of these remarkable narratives, this book makes a significant contribution to both work on William Morris and to nineteenth-century studies more generally.

The body of the "Other" - exotic, unfamiliar, fascinating - is the topic of this collection of essays on nineteenth-century British theatre. An informed, updated insight into the multifaceted presence of the non-British in both Georgian and Victorian drama is offered, shedding light on the complex engagement of British culture with alterity.

This book brings together a range of texts and events: nineteenth-century novels and plays, riots on the streets and stages of London, popular games, artwork, criminal profiles and political economy. Tying these topics together is the spectacle created around «Pagan, Turk and Jew», a phrase appearing as early as 1548, and one that came to denominate fictional stand-ins for Irish Catholics, Muslims and Jews during the long nineteenth century. Beginning with the Gordon riots of 1780, these «Others» were objectified as exotic bodies and used oppositionally against one another, both in policy and legislation and in cultural representations. Surveying literary works by Maria Edgeworth and Charles Dickens, as well as the work of lesser known figures such as Richard Cumberland, John Thomas Smith and Patrick Colquhoun, the author studies the role played by racial marking and ethnic stereotyping in the solidification of a post-riot British social body through both real and virtual spaces. Unlike other studies of minority experience and culture that concern a single population, this book casts a wider net, believing racist and religious bias to be a reactionary dynamic, prey to a host of struggles occurring simultaneously that ricochet off one another in the contestatory culture of the Romantic era.

The Edwardian era is often romanticised as a tranquil period of garden parties and golden afternoons, but the reality was quite different. The years between 1901 and 1914 were a highly turbulent period of intense social conflict, and this volume draws attention to the writing of the marginalised, including women, minorities and the poor.