Cemetery Plots from Victoria to Verdun ─ Literary Representations of Epitaph and Burial from the 19th Century Through the Great War

Kichner (English, Lorain County Community College, Ohio) explores the changing literary and historical conventions of epitaph writing and the value placed upon individual burial within the wider culture of mourning during the 19th century. She discusses novel responses to 19th century reform with an emphasis on Charles Dickens, epitaphs and memorializing literature in general, and war writing and the new cemetery problem. The horrors of mechanized warfare in World War I, she argues, reminded people of the crowded and sordid public cemeteries before the 19th-century reforms. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Heather J. Kichner is Associate Professor of English at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio, where she teaches developmental writing, English as a second language, composition, and literature. She has been studying cemeterial literature and the discourse of memorialization for ten years.