The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, June, 2001

The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel. Deidre David, editor. Cambridge University Press. [pound]37.50 h.b. and [pound]13.95 p.b. 267 pages. ISBN 0-521-64150-0 h.b. and 0-521-64619-7 p.b. This collection of eleven essays, mainly by American academics, looks at various aspects of the Victorian novel.

During the nineteenth century the novel became the predominant form of fiction in Britain whether serialised, published in parts or in the 'three decker' format. The novel kept pace with increasing literacy and falling costs of production: it ranged from the serious to the scurrilous. The essays discuss the novel's readership, the business of publishing, the novel's 'aesthetics', the novel and Britain's expanding industrial base, the growth of detective stories and of sensationalist novels (such as those by Wilkie Collins and Dickens at his most melodramatic), intellectual debate in the novel and a final essay on the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne on Dickens and other novelists. There are also the now o bligatory essays on gender, sexuality and race. Given the American background of most of the contributors an essay on the increasingly important role played by the U.S. in Victorian fiction would have been welcome.