Victorian Novels Of Oxbridge Life
Victorian Novels Of Oxbridge Life

Author: Christopher Stray

Publisher: Thoemmes

Published: 2004-04

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13:

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The books provide a fair coverage of the production history of the nineteenth-century university novel. Three are on Oxford, two on Cambridge; four are male-centred, one (A Newnham Friendship) represents the very small group of university novels about women. Some of them have distinctive features that are brought out in the introduction by Christopher Stray. Lockhart is well known as the editor of the Quarterly Review, biographer of Burns and Walter Scott, and translator of Cervantes. Tyrwhitt was a Christ Church Tory, and his novel was a conservative response to the aesthetic homosexuality of Walter Pater. Hughes is well known, and this novel is compared to his previous best-seller, Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857). Hughes's Tory heartiness (he and Charles Kingsley were the original 'muscular Christians') makes a nice contrast with Tyrwhitt's Ruskinian Toryism. Not much is known of Stronach, but she taught at a primary school in Mull, and contributed articles to the Girls' Own Paper on 'Openings for Women as Civil Service Clerks' and 'Some Splendid Outdoor Games for Girls'. She also translated some very gloomy Scandinavian novels into English.James Rice, author of The Cambridge Freshman under the pseudonym 'Martin Legrand', was a prolific popular novelist who often collaborated with Walter Besant.

The Oxford Handbook of the Victorian Novel
The Oxford Handbook of the Victorian Novel

Author: Lisa Rodensky

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2013-07-11

Total Pages: 829

ISBN-13: 0191652512

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Much has been written about the Victorian novel, and for good reason. The cultural power it exerted (and, to some extent, still exerts) is beyond question. The Oxford Handbook of the Victorian Novel contributes substantially to this thriving scholarly field by offering new approaches to familiar topics (the novel and science, the Victorian Bildungroman) as well as essays on topics often overlooked (the novel and classics, the novel and the OED, the novel, and allusion). Manifesting the increasing interdisciplinarity of Victorian studies, its essays situate the novel within a complex network of relations (among, for instance, readers, editors, reviewers, and the novelists themselves; or among different cultural pressures - the religious, the commercial, the legal). The handbook's essays also build on recent bibliographic work of remarkable scope and detail, responding to the growing attention to print culture. With a detailed introduction and 36 newly commissioned chapters by leading and emerging scholars — beginning with Peter Garside's examination of the early nineteenth-century novel and ending with two essays proposing the 'last Victorian novel' — the handbook attends to the major themes in Victorian scholarship while at the same time creating new possibilities for further research. Balancing breadth and depth, the clearly-written, nonjargon -laden essays provide readers with overviews as well as original scholarship, an approach which will serve advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and established scholars. As the Victorians get further away from us, our versions of their culture and its novel inevitably change; this Handbook offers fresh explorations of the novel that teach us about this genre, its culture, and, by extension, our own.

Oxford in English Literature
Oxford in English Literature

Author: John Dougill

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9780472107841

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As "the English Athens," Oxford has long been seen as central to England's intellectual life. For over six centuries the city has been lauded, slighted, and cited in the pages of English literature. While it has been hailed as the embodiment of excellence, beauty, and truth on the one hand, it has also been attacked for its elitism, insularity, and traditionalism on the other. Oxford in English Literature provides for the first time an overview of these literary representations, ranging from Chaucer's account of medieval students to modern-day detective stories set in the city. The book begins with the early university, possibly founded by an eighth-century princess named Frideswide. The volume moves on through the Middle Ages with Chaucer's clerks and Foxe's martyrs. Oxford in English Literature touches on more recent centuries with Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland, Matthew Arnold, Max Beerbohm and Evelyn Waugh, and the "Infamous St. Oscar." Following the rise of the colleges, the literature becomes characterized by a sense of insulation, for the closed collegiate structure led to elitism and eccentricity. The notion of the university as a paradise of youth, beauty, and intelligence led to the so-called Oxford myth and the backlash against it after World War II. The underlying argument of John Dougill's work is that the defining symbol of Oxford is not so much the dreaming spire as the college wall. In Oxford literature the college is depicted as a world of its own--secluded, conservative, and eccentric, driven by its own rituals. Idealized, it becomes a cloistered utopia, an Athenian city-state, a fantasy wonderland, or an Arcadian idyll. Exclusivity led to resentment from those on the outside, as is evident in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. With the advent of democratic and egalitarian values in the twentieth century, the privilege and elitism of the university has come under increasing attack, as has the whole notion of the "English Athens." Oxford in English Literature is aimed at the general reader interested in the literature and history of a very unusual town. Its familiar subject and the inclusion of numerous rare and specially commissioned illustrations and photographs make this a compelling book. John Dougill is Associate Professor of English Literature, Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Japan. He is an Oxford graduate and author of The Writers of English Literature.