Varieties of Victorianism: The Uses of a Past

Front Matter....Pages i-xii
Introduction: Past and Present — the Case of Samuel Smiles’ Self Help....Pages 1-24
Imperial Muscular Christianity: Thomas Hughes’s Biography of David Livingstone....Pages 25-39
Victorian Modernity? Writing the Great Exhibition....Pages 40-62
Black Silk and Red Paisley: the Toxic Woman in Wilkie Collins’s Armadale....Pages 63-79
A Postmodern Victorian? Lewis Carroll and the Critique of Totalising Reason....Pages 80-97
Politics as Antagonism and Diversity: Mill and Lyotard....Pages 98-109
‘Victorian Values’ and Silas Marner....Pages 110-125
Racism in the Mid-Victorian Novel: Thackeray’s Philip....Pages 126-141
The Reason for Drinking in Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge....Pages 142-160
‘To Whom Does He Address Himself?’: Reading Wordsworth in Browning’s Pauline....Pages 161-178
A Rose is a Rose is a Rover....Pages 179-190
Haven’t I Seen You Somewhere Before? Melodrama, Postmodernism and Victorian Culture....Pages 191-205
‘A low born labourer like you’: Audience and Victorian Working-Class Melodrama....Pages 206-219
‘Victorian Values’ and ‘Fast Young Ladies’: from Madeleine Smith to Ruth Rendell....Pages 220-235
Vampires and Victorians: Count Dracula and the Return of the Repressive Hypothesis....Pages 236-249
Of Elephants and Men: the Freak as Victorian and Contemporary Spectacle....Pages 250-262
Back Matter....Pages 263-270