From Sketch to Novel The Development of Victorian Fiction [Paperback]

This book shows how the literary sketch influenced the careers of William Thackeray, Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell.In this unusual study of a previously neglected literary form, Amanpal Garcha shows how the literary sketch influenced the careers of William Thackeray, Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell, transformed the marketplace for fiction, and led to the development of some of the Victorian novel's key formal and ideological elements.In this unusual study of a previously neglected literary form, Amanpal Garcha shows how the literary sketch influenced the careers of William Thackeray, Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell, transformed the marketplace for fiction, and led to the development of some of the Victorian novel's key formal and ideological elements.When William Thackeray, Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell began their writing careers in the 1830s, they chose to write literary sketches, adopting a popular short form that emphasized description and essayistic analysis rather than storytelling. In this unusual study of a previously neglected literary form, Amanpal Garcha shows how the literary sketch influenced these authors' careers, transformed the marketplace for fiction and led to the development of some of the Victorian novel's key formal and ideological elements.Acknowledgments; Part I. Introduction: From Sketch to Novel: 1. Modern change and aestheticized stasis in the early nineteenth century; 2. Plotless styles in novel history and theory; Part II. Journalism, Modernity, and Stasis in The Paris Sketch Book and The History of Pendennis: 3. Capitalist excess, gentlemanly atavism: Thackeray's devils in his early sketches; 4. Pendennis's stasis and Thackeray's professional sensibilities; Part III. Styles of Stillness and Motion: Charles Dickens's Lower-Class Descriptions: 5. Sketches by Boz: narrative form and market culture; 6. Narrating stasis, describing reform: Nicholas Nickleby; Part IV. Elizabeth Gaskell's Individualism, from 'Sketchl