Realism and the Institution of the Nineteenth-Century Novel

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-68
Author(s):  
Mary L. Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Margaret Oliphant ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Walter Scott

This chapter argues that establishing an origin for what we now call ‘British realism’ or ‘the Irish novel’ is both an institutional and an anachronistic endeavour: the stories that we tell about novels are actually stories about the cultural institutions that study novels. Considering the formal and political divisions of Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent alongside its changing critical reception, the chapter demonstrates how ‘British realism’ is an anachronistic formation and offers a new origin story where ‘British realism’ and ‘the Irish novel’ are not separate traditions or forms, but rather dynamically intertwined. Castle Rackrent, long thought to be an exemplary Irish novel precisely because it is not realist, develops realist contradictions that are taken up by later nineteenth-century Irish, Scottish and English novelists like Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant and Anthony Trollope.

CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHIES OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVELISTS

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 535-549
Author(s):  
Frederick R. Karl
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Peter Ackroyd ◽  
Oxford University Press

IT IS TIME to assess where contemporary biographies of Victorian novelists are heading. With two more books about George Eliot, still others on Jane Austen, and another on Anthony Trollope, we see redundancy everywhere. As for other major figures, the Brontës have finally quieted down with Juliet Barker’s monumental biography; Dickens has settled in with Peter Ackroyd and Fred Kaplan, and whoever is waiting in the wings for another stab at his life is probably wise to await the completion of the magnificent Oxford University Press edition of the letters, now passing Volume 11.

Literature and the Expansion of the Press

2014 ◽  
pp. 506-521
Author(s):  
Joanne Shattock
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Creative Writing ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Margaret Oliphant ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Press

This chapter traces the growth of the periodical press from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the Victorian period, emphasizing the explosion in the number of weekly and monthly publications that serialized fiction. It demonstrates the interconnections between the professionalization of authorship in the Victorian period and the buoyant periodical press. The editorship of a weekly or monthly magazine was a role undertaken by a number of writers, providing a regular income in addition to fees earned from individual works. Poets too profited from publication in magazines, but it was mainly novelists, whose works often first appeared in weeklies and monthlies and who combined reviewing the work of others with creative writing at some point in their careers, who benefited most from the press. Writers discussed include Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Margaret Oliphant, and Tennyson.

Jonson’s Reception

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Substantial Influence ◽  
Literary Influence ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

This chapter surveys Jonson’s impact on the nineteenth century, tracing out his substantial influence on poets, novelists and theatre professionals on the page and on the stage. In 1990, D. H. Craig wrote: ‘Jonson’s work, for the nineteenth century, was bafflingly inconsistent.’ This chapter, looking in detail at the way in which writers such as Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, George Eliot, and Anthony Trollope interacted with and learned from Jonson, argues that his work did offer a consistent point of departure for important trends in nineteenth-century writing. By examining such specific encounters, and the work done by William Poel in reviving Jonson’s plays for the professional theatre at the end of the century, this chapter continues to reshape our sense both of the power and persistence of Jonson’s literary influence in the centuries after his death.

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