The Nineteenth-Century Novel: A Critical Readerprovides a comprehensive selection of contemporary and modern essays on the most important novels of the period. By bringing together a range of material written across two centuries, it offers an insight into the changing reception of realist fiction and a discussion of how complex debates about the meaning and function of realism informed and shaped the kind of fiction that was written in the nineteenth century. The novels discussed are: Northanger Abbey, Jane Eyre, Dombey and Son, Middlemarch, Far From the Madding Crowd, Germinal, Madame Bovary, The Woman in White, The Portrait of a Lady, The Awakening, Dracula, Heart of Darkness.
'Stephen Regan's hefty collection of essays on the 19th century novel is indispensable to any course on Victorian literature.'-
Times Higher Education Supplement'This compendium of sixty or so essays provides every angle on fiction anyone could possibly want, with unobtrusive orientation for less experienced students of literature.'-
Joy Alexander, Use of EnglishStephen Regan is Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, University of London.