British Fiction of the 19th Century

“The love of fiction is so strong and universal a passion, that it may be called a natural instinct of the human mind,” declared a contributor to the Westminster Review in 1853.  “[It] is almost the only intellectual tie between barbarous and civilized man,” they continued, evoking anxieties about evolution, progress, and race that percolate throughout nineteenth-century literature.  Our journey through British fiction of the so-called long nineteenth century will afford us opportunity to explore ways that such concerns were reflected and mediated through fiction.  

The period spanning between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century witnessed the evolution of the novel from an experimental form received by critics with some suspicion, to one of the predominant literary genres.  Just as the novel dominated the literary landscape of the nineteenth century, so it will be predominant in our course, although we will supplement novels with short works, such as tales, sketches, and short stories.  Readings on the course will be representative of diverse genres and literary modes, such as the Gothic, the domestic novel, the governess novel, sensation fiction, detective fiction, and ghost stories.  Authors represented on the course might include Sir Walter Scott, Anne Brontë, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, George Eliot, Edith Johnstone, William Morris, George Egerton, Sarah Grand, Victoria Cross, or Thomas Hardy.

Situating readings within their socio-cultural context will allow us to reflect on ways nineteenth-century fiction addressed and shaped very real issues and concerns of the day, such as class, economics, sexuality, race, colonialism, gender, travel, science, medicine, labour, religion, faith, art, the relationship between the past and the present, the construction of the self, and the relationship between the individual and their society.  Lectures, discussions, and other activities will also consider the material culture of reading and writing, book publishing, the relationship between fiction and the periodical press, and the place of fiction in the development of reading communities.   

“Art lives upon discussion,” Henry James reminds us, “upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints.”  Accordingly, our exploration of nineteenth-century fiction will revolve around discussion and active engagement with course readings.  Students are expected to approach course material with curiosity and open minds, and to actively participate, not only in their own learning journey, but in the learning community of the class.  Keep in mind that nineteenth-century novels are characteristically long, so be prepared to do a lot of reading!