An accessible and wide-ranging introduction to the era, this companion explores influential dramatic works by Ibsen, Shaw and Wilde; the poetry of mourning; novelistic genres, including social problem novels and sensation fiction; and the literature of the fin de siecle's aesthetes and decadents. Cultural and historical debates - focussing on empire, national identity, science and evolution, print culture and gender - supply essential context alongside discussion of relevant critical theory.

About the Author

Dr Beth Palmer is lecturer in English Literature at the University of Surrey (from September 2010). Her teaching interests are wide-ranging and she has taught British and American literature from the 18th to 21st centuries with particular interests in Victorian fiction, women's writing, and the Bronte sisters. Her research interests have centred around Victorian fiction, print culture and the press, readership and women's writing. Forthcoming publications are Women's Authorship and Editorship in Victorian Culture: Sensational Strategies (Oxford University Press, 2011) and A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, 1850-1900, eds Beth Palmer and Adelene Buckland (Ashgate, 2011). She is currently developing a new research project on the relationship between the popular theatre and the Victorian novel and is also interested in neo-Victorian fiction.

Reviews

"The book was well written and flowed neatly, linking ideas and works by different authors, and as ever quotations help to outline different points... The book was very useful, particularly its extended commentary on Dorian Gray"

- Kimberley Simpson, English Student Warwick University

Book Information
ISBN 9781408204818
Author Beth Palmer
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Longman
Publisher Pearson Education Limited
Weight(grams) 406g
Dimensions(mm) 147mm * 211mm * 13mm