The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture

The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture is a major contribution to the dynamic field of Victorian studies. This collection of 37 original chapters by leading international Victorian scholars offers new approaches to familiar themes, including science, religion, and gender, and gives space to newer and emerging topics, including old age, fair play, and economics. Structured around three broad sections (on "Ways of Being: Identity and Ideology," "Ways of Understanding: Knowledge and Belief," and "Ways of Communicating: Print and Other Cultures"), the volume is sub-divided into nine sub-sections each with its own "lead" essay: on subjectivity, politics, gender and sexuality, place and race, religion, science, material and mass culture, aesthetics and visual culture, and theatrical culture. The collection, like today's Victorian studies, is thoroughly interdisciplinary and yet its substantial Introduction explores a concern which is evident both implicitly and explicitly in the volume's essays: that is, the nature and status of "literary" culture and the literary from the Victorian period to the present. The diverse and wide-ranging essays present original scholarship framed accessibly for a mixed readership of advanced undergraduates, graduate students and established scholars.

Juliet John is Hildred Carlile Chair of English Literature and Director of the Center for Victorian Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published widely on Victorian literature and culture. Her books includeDickens's Villains: Melodrama, Character, Popular Culture, Dickens andMass Culture, and most recently, Reading and the Victorians, which she co-edited with Matthew Bradley. She is the Editor-in-Chief ofOxford Bibliographies: Victorian Literature.