About the Book
This handbook offers analysis of diverse genres and media of neo-Victorianism, including film and television adaptations of Victorian texts, authors’ life stories, graphic novels, and contemporary fiction set in the nineteenth century. Contextualized by Sarah E Maier and Brenda Ayres in a comprehensive introduction, the collection describes current trends in neo-Victorian scholarship of novels, film, theatre, crime, empire/postcolonialism, Gothic, materiality, religion and science, amongst others. A variety of scholars from around the world contribute to this volume by applying an assortment of theoretical approaches and interdisciplinary focus in their critique of a wide range of narratives—from early neo-Victorian texts such as A. S. Byatt’s Possession (1963) and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) to recent steampunk, from musical theatre to slumming, and from The Alienist to queerness—in their investigation of how this fiction reconstructs the past, informed by and reinforming the present.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Neo-Victorianism - Sarah E. Maier and Brenda Ayres.- Section 1: Neo-Victorian Genesis.- Chapter 1: Reinventing the Victorians by Jean Rhys and John Fowles - Catherine Layton.- Chapter 2: Tradition and Innovation in A.S. Byatt’s Possession - Pritika Pradhan, Rutgers University.- Chapter 3: Neo-Victorian Poetry - Jo Morton, University of Greenwich.- Section 2: Neo-Victorian Performances.- Chapter 4: Adapting Wilkie Collins Adapting Himself: Revisiting The Moonstone (1868, 1877, 2016) - Robert Laurella, University of Oxford.- Chapter 5: Miss Potter and Victorian Women’s Artistic Aspirations - Maria Juko, University of Hamburg.- Chapter 6: “And thou art like the poisonous tree / That stole my life away”: The Afterlives of Pre-Raphaelite Women in Desperate Romantics - Anne-Marie Beller and Claire O’Callaghan, Loughborough University, UK.- Chapter 7: Interpretations are Illimitable: Adapting George Eliot - Saswati Halder, Jadavpur University.- Chapter 8: Neo-Victorian Musical Theatre - Marija Reiff, American University of Sharjah.- Chapter 9: The Tortured Genius of the Neo-Victorian West End - Louise Creechan, Durham University.- Chapter 10: Music Hall and “The Handprint of History on the Present Moment” - Catherine Quirk, Edge Hill University.- Section 3: Neo-Victorian Crime, Empire, and Postcolonialism.- Chapter 11: The Thug in the Margin and the Murderer in the Centre: Re-reading the Victorian Discourse of Criminology in Tabish Khair’s The Thing About Thugs - Sajalkumar Bhattacharya, Kazi Nazrul University.- Chapter 12: Neo-Victorian Violence - Sophie Franklin, University of Tübingen.- Chapter 13: Rewriting the Convict Life in Australia: A Reading of Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs - Anjan Saikia, Kamargaon College.- Chapter 14: Under Transimperial Eyes: Traversing Anarchy, Crime, and Patriotism in Neo-Japanese- Victorian Anime, Moriarty, the Patriot - Preeshita Biswas, Texas Christian University.- Chapter 15: The Brontë Myth, Biofiction and Neo-Victorian Crime Novels - Barbara Braid, University of Szczecin.- Chapter 16: The Sinister Community of Objects: An Archaeological Reading of The Silent Companions - Arka Chakraborty, Jadavpur University.- Section 4: Neo-Victorian Gothic and Materiality.- Chapter 17: Temporality of the Neo-Victorian: Abjection in Matthew Kneale’s Sweet Thames - Suvendu Ghatak, University of Florida.- Chapter 18: The Hauntology of the Neo-Victorian Ghost Story - Brenda Ayres.- Chapter 19: Crimson Peak: The Ghosting of the Past - Brenda Ayres.- Chapter 20: The Limehouse Golem: Female Agency and Neo-Victorian Slumming - Brooke Cameron, Queen’s University, Ontario.- Chapter 21: Dust and Sewers, Filth and Waste: Disgusting Neo-Victorian Narratives - Eckart Voigts, TU Braunschweig.- Chapter 22: Victorian Ghostwriters, House Whisperers, and the Haunted House in Home Before Dark - Brenda Ayres.- Section 5: Neo-Victorian Other(s). -Chapter 23: “Cult of the Neo-Victorian Child” - Patricia Pulham, University of Surrey.- Chapter 24: Neo-Victorian Bodies of Inquiry: Narratives for Tweens to Teens - Sarah E. Maier.- Chapter 25: Neo-Victorian Queerness: New Directions - Rachel M. Friars, Queen’s University, Ontario.- Chapter 26: On Neo-Victorian Addiction, Alienism, Sex, and Insanity - Sarah E. Maier.- Chapter 27: “Men in Women’s Clothes”: Re-Imagining Stella and Fanny in Neo-Victorian Celebrity Biofiction - Danielle Mariann Dove, University of Surrey and Daný van Dam, Leiden University.- Section 6: Neo-Victorian Religion and Science.- Chapter 28: Dracula Never Dies: Spirituality and Science in the Neo-Victorian Vampire - Carole Senf, Georgia Tech.- Chapter 29: “Neo-Victorian Religion” - Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, SUNY Brockport.- Chapter 29: Exotic Prehistory or Relevant Science: Sukumar Ray’s Posthuman Subversion of Victorian Travel Literature - Sutirtho Roy, University of Calcutta.- Chapter 30: “I’m going to break you and remake you”: Reimagining David Lynch’s The Elephant Man in Museum, Documentary, and Comedy - Helen Davies, University of Wolverhampton and Louise Logan-Smith, Teesside University.- Section 7: Neo-Victorian Outcomes.- Chapter 31: Neo-Victorian Graphic Novel - Catherine Golden, Skidmore College.- Chapter 32: Gaslight: The Play, the Film, the Verb - Benjamin Poore, University of York.- Chapter 33: Is Steampunk Neo-Victorian? - Martin Danahay, Brock University.- Chapter 34: Drag, Dreadfuls, and Draculas: (Neo-)Victorians for TV - Sarah E. Maier
About the Author :
Sarah E. Maier is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of New Brunswick Saint John, Canada.
Brenda Ayres teaches online courses for Liberty University and Southern New Hampshire University, USA.
Maier and Ayres have coedited several collections of essays. The most recent are Neo-Victorian Things (2022), Neo-Disneyism (2022), The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture (2022), The Theological Dickens (2022), A Vindication of the Redhead (2021), Neo-Victorian Madness (2020) Neo-Gothic Narratives: (2020), Animals and Their Children in Victorian Culture (2019), and Reinventing Marie Corelli (2019).
Review :
“The introduction provides a distinctive history of the term ‘neo-Victorian’ and explores the uses, app … . The themes and texts explored are many and diverse. This is a substantial book … . All of these and many more offer a great deal of thought-provoking explorations of how we rewrite the nineteenth century, but there are, of course, too many for me to explore them all in detail.” (Serena Trowbridge, PRS, Pre-Raphaelite Society Review, 2024)
