Inaugurating a major new series, successor to the
Oxford History of English Literature but excitingly new
in its emphasis on 'literary history', this volume
covers the flowering of Victorian literature, from the
decade when Tennyson started writing In Memoriam and
Darwin embarked on the Beagle to the publication of
Hardy's first great novels and the death of George
Eliot. The Victorian era produced a literature of
diversity and experimentation, engaged with powerful
controversies and heartfelt arguments that lie at the
centre of the formation of the modern world. It has
often been misrepresented, either as an age of dull and
rigid certainty or one of anxious and depressive
morbidity, but what distinguishes the writing of the
period - from its origins in the 1830s to its crisis
point around 1880 - is its power of serious inquiry. It
poses questions about the relation between society and
the individual, the rival claims of market and morality,
the form and function of democracy, and, above all, the
existence or non-existence of God and the purposes of
human life.Such concerns make this a time in which
literature has a new urgency and vitality, and lies
close to the heart of a culminating crisis of the
Western conscience. The series will enlighten and
inspire not only everyone studying, teaching, and
researching in English Literature, but all keen readers
of English fiction. |
|