Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Writing the Victorians -- Narrating the Victorians -- Detecting the Victorians -- Resurrecting the Victorians -- Reading the Victorians -- Writing as the Victorians -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index
Introduction: Writing the Victorians -- Narrating the Victorians -- Detecting the Victorians -- Resurrecting the Victorians -- Reading the Victorians -- Coda: Writing as the Victorians
Summary
More than 100 years after the death of Queen Victoria, contemporary culture remains fascinated by the Victorians. This fascination is most marked in fiction, where an entirely new genre of neo-Victorian fiction has emerged. Neo-Victorian Fiction and Historical Narrative argues that while neo-Victorian fiction emerges within a wider cultural appropriation of the Victorians, it is characterized by its commitment to the historical specificity of the Victorian era. Neo-Victorian fiction is historical fiction and as such involves a dual approach to the present and the past: these novels are determined by both the contemporary moment of writing and the Victorian moment in which they are set. This book mimics that dual approach by analyzing neo-Victorian fiction in relation to both contemporary debates about history and Victorian historical narratives. It combines broad discussion of the genre with detailed analysis of a range of neo-Victorian texts from the last 20 years
