Victorian Narratives of the Recent Past: Memory, History, Fiction (Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture)

Kingstone, Helen

ISBN 10: 3319841866 / ISBN 13: 9783319841861

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

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Seller Inventory # ria9783319841861_new

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Victorian Narratives of the Recent Past: Memory, History, Fiction (Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture)
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3319841866
• ISBN 13: 9783319841861
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

This book explains why narrating the recent past is always challenging, and shows how it was particularly fraught in the nineteenth century. The legacy of Romantic historicism, the professionalization of the historical discipline, and even the growth of social history, all heightened the stakes. This book brings together Victorian histories and novels to show how these parallel genres responded to the challenges of contemporary history writing in divergent ways. Many historians shrank from engaging with controversial recent events. This study showcases the work of those rare historians who defied convention, including the polymath Harriet Martineau, English nationalist J. R. Green, and liberal enthusiast Spencer Walpole. A striking number of popular Victorian novels are retrospective. This book argues that Charlotte Brontė, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot’s “novels of the recent past” are long overdue recognition as genuinely historical novels. By focusing on provincial communities, these novelists reveal undercurrents invisible to national narratives, and intervene in debates about women’s contribution to history.

About the Author

Helen Kingstone is Lecturer in Victorian Studies at the University of Glasgow. Her research addresses the relationship between memory and history in the nineteenth century, focusing on how writers in different genres and forms approached contemporary history. Other publications include a chapter in Utopias and Dystopias in the Fiction of H. G. Wells and William Morris, ed. Emelyne Godfrey (Palgrave, 2016), and work on scientific ideas of progress in Nineteenth-Century Contexts and in Historicising Humans ed. Efram Sera-Shriar (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018).