Urban Industry and Literary Work: The Construction of Authorship in the Victorian Social -Problem Novel, 1845--1866
Starr, Elizabeth Ann
This item is only available for download by members of the University of Illinois community. Students, faculty, and staff at the U of I may log in with your NetID and password to view the item. If you are trying to access an Illinois-restricted dissertation or thesis, you can request a copy through your library's Inter-Library Loan office or purchase a copy directly from ProQuest.
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/81376
Description
Title
Urban Industry and Literary Work: The Construction of Authorship in the Victorian Social -Problem Novel, 1845--1866
Author(s)
Starr, Elizabeth Ann
Issue Date
2001
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Anderson, Amanda
Department of Study
English
Discipline
English
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, English
Language
eng
Abstract
"This dissertation analyzes Victorian social-problem novels as products of an urban, industrial literary culture. Challenging the genre's reputation as a prominently mimetic endeavor of middle-class observers, I argue that the writers I address considered themselves ""authors"" immersed in literary practices and professions. Victorian social-problem novels were particularly responsive to the popular markets that made fiction an outlet for social influence. This genre's investment in the efficacy and circulation of fiction provided aspiring and established authors alike with a heightened awareness of the social and economic contexts for their work. Re-contextualizing this genre within the culture of literary production, I argue, allows us to consider Victorian writers' conceptions of themselves as a part of urban industry; to place writing within nineteenth-century debates about the status of labor and profession; and to recuperate social-problem fiction's specifically literary ties and ambitions. This dissertation focuses on Sybil (1845) by Benjamin Disraeli, Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855) by Elizabeth Gaskell, Alton Locke (1850) by Charles Kingsley, Hard Times (1854) by Charles Dickens, and Felix Holt (1866) George Eliot. Individual chapters analyze writers' attempts to project narrative into the heart of urban scenes and labor conflicts. This dissertation accordingly reframes critical accounts of social-problem fiction as a product of the ""hungry forties,"" acknowledging authors' extra-literary aspirations for fiction while recognizing how these texts helped shape popular conceptions of what ""the literary"" was and what it could do."
Use this login method if you
don't
have an
@illinois.edu
email address.
(Oops, I do have one)
IDEALS migrated to a new platform on June 23, 2022. If you created
your account prior to this date, you will have to reset your password
using the forgot-password link below.
