PRESENCE OF THE PRESENT: TOPICS OF THE DAY IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL (VICTORIAN LIFE & LITERATURE) - Softcover

ALTICK, RICHARD D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814252796 ISBN 13: 9780814252796

Publisher: Ohio State University Press, 2016

Synopsis

The Presence of the Present: Topics of the Day in the Victorian Novel is the first comprehensive study of Victorian novelists' use of the era's everyday culture and common knowledge in their writings. Victorian novelists knew that the men and women who bought and borrowed their books had an insatiable appetite for reading books about people like themselves in the instantly recognizable world in which they lived. They catered to this appetite by, among other devices, scattering through their pages allusions to people, places, and events in the news at the moment a novel was published, as well as to objects, scenes, and fashions that were particularly characteristic of the present-day setting. References to this body of common knowledge helped, in addition, to strengthen the intimate rapport with their readers that authors so much prized in the period, and they also contributed to the realistic effect that authenticated characters and scenes and thus encouraged readers' imaginative assent to the fiction. The Presence of the Present has been derived from approximately 150 novels of the era, from Pickwick Papers to Trollope's last novels and The Mayor of Casterbridge. All the "great names" of Victorian fiction are here-Dickens, Thackeray, Disraeli, George Eliot, Charlotte Brontė, Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Hardy, Meredith-as well as a representative selection of the less-than-great-Charles Reade, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Samuel Warren, and the unjustly neglected Robert Smith Surtees. The many illustrations, drawn principally form the Illustrated London News and Punch and from the novels themselves, re-create for a reader at the end of the twentieth century the same images that were evoked in the minds of the novels' first readers. The book, therefore, surveys that manner in which Victorian fiction draws upon the observations and experiences of the readers for whom the novelists wrote-not "posterity," but readers of the daily press and riders on the new railways. Here we meet the half-legendary figure of Stultz the fashionable tailor; learn about the messages conveyed at different times and on different social levels by cigar smoking and the wearing of gloves; discover the jokey career of the crinoline, the humors and corrupt practices of parliamentary elections, and scores of other topics that, when fully explained, help us to read with better understanding the living book of Victorian fiction. Richard D. Altick is Regents' Professor Emeritus of English at The Ohio State University. He is the author of numerous books, including The English Common Reader, The Scholar Adventures, Victorian People and Ideas, The Shows of London, Paintings from Books, and Writers, Readers, and Occasions.

About this title

About the Author:

Altick is Regent's Professor of English at The Ohio State University.

From Library Journal:

This vast, rich, and witty book concerns British novels written during the mid-19th century. With unfailing verve, Atlick discusses "topicalities," by which he means "references to people, events, or places that were present in the public consciousness" when the novels, great or otherwise, were published. Atlick also covers the details of everyday Victorian life--among them, attitudes toward smoking, popular consumer goods, the connotations of hair color, transportation, the scourge of bankruptcy, and the acceptance of slang. He illuminates references the novels' first readers easily understood but which most today find puzzling. Any reader of Victorian novels will find this book invaluable--either when read cover to cover or piecemeal. Recommended for academic and larger public collections.
- John Miller, Normandale Community Coll., Bloomington, Minn.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ohio State University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0814252796
• ISBN 13: 9780814252796
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 864