Research Guides: ENGL 3655: Victorian Literature: Background Research

Background Research for Victorian Literature

One of the best ways to get started on research—especially for topics that are new to you—is to take a step back from the databases and learn as much as you can about the context of your topic. For example, Charles Dickens frequently created characters and plots that reflect contemporary events and customs. The more you know about Dickens' historical and social context, the easier it will be to identify themes and build arguments about his works.

These books are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the library's collection of materials about Victorian literature. For recommended books about Victorian-era history, scroll down. Use the instructions at the bottom of this page to find more helpful books.

Cambridge History of Victorian Literature (Print Book) by Kate Flint (Editor)
Publication Date: 2012

This collaborative History aims to become the standard work on Victorian literature for the twenty-first century. Well-known scholars introduce readers to their particular fields, discuss influential critical debates and offer illuminating contextual detail to situate authors and works in their wider cultural and historical contexts...Together, the contributors create an engaging discussion of the ways in which the Victorians saw themselves and of how their influence has persisted.
Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture (Print Book) by Herbert F. Tucker (Editor)
Publication Date: 1999

Thirty leading Victorianists from around the world collaborate here in a multidimensional analysis of the breadth and sweep of modern Britain's longest, unruliest literary epoch.
Key Concepts in Victorian Literature (Print Book) by Sean Purchase
Publication Date: 2006

Key Concepts in Victorian Literature is a lively, clear, and accessible resource for anyone interested in Victorian literature. It contains major facts, ideas, and contemporary literary theories is packed with close and detailed readings, and offers an overview of the historical and cultural context in which this literature was produced.
Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature (Ebook) by Mark Knight and Emma Mason
Publication Date: 2007

Recent scholarship in nineteenth-century literary studies consistently recognizes the profound importance of religion, even as it marginalizes the topic...This book aims to show how religion, specifically Christianity, is integral to the literature and culture of this period. It provides close readings of popular texts and integrates these with accessible explanations of complex religious ideas.
Victorian Literature (Ebook) by David Amigoni
Publication Date: 2011

How were the genres of literature changed by new methods of serialization and publishing? How did a widespread culture of performance emerge in the period to shape as well as to be shaped by the novel and poetry? David Amigoni draws on the most recent critical approaches to the novel, Victorian melodrama, and poetry to answer these and other questions. The work of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Carlyle, and Mathew Arnold are explored in relation to ideas about fiction, journalism, drama, poetry, the New Woman, gothic, horror and the Victorian sage.
Victorian Literature and Postcolonial Studies (Ebook) by Patrick Brantlinger
Publication Date: 2009

This book surveys the impact of the British Empire on nineteenth-century British literature from a postcolonial perspective. It explains both pro-imperialist themes and attitudes in works by major Victorian authors and also points of resistance to and criticisms of the Empire such as abolitionism, as well as the first stirrings of nationalism in India and elsewhere.

Background Research for Victorian History

Anxious Times: Medicine and Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Ebook) by Amelia Bonea, Melissa Dickson, Sally Shuttleworth, and Jennifer Wallis
Publication Date: 2019

Anxious Times examines perceptions of the pressures of modern life and their impact on bodily and mental health in nineteenth-century Britain. The authors explore anxieties stemming from the potentially harmful impact of new technologies, changing work and leisure practices, and evolving cultural pressures and expectations within rapidly changing external environments. Their work reveals how an earlier age confronted the challenges of seemingly unprecedented change and diagnosed transformations in both the culture of the era and the life of the mind.
Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth (Ebook) by Lee Jackson
Publication Date: 2014

In Victorian London, filth was everywhere: horse traffic filled the streets with dung, household rubbish went uncollected, cesspools brimmed with "night soil," graveyards teemed with rotting corpses, the air itself was choked with smoke. In this intimately visceral book, Lee Jackson guides us through the underbelly of the Victorian metropolis, introducing us to the men and women who struggled to stem a rising tide of pollution and dirt, and the forces that opposed them.
Hooligans, Harlots, and Hangmen: Crime and Punishment in Victorian Britain (Print Book) by David Taylor
Publication Date: 2010

This detailed study of the criminal justice system in Victorian Britain highlights the dilemmas facing those responsible for administering justice and protecting society from "the criminal." The author draws heavily on primary documents and contemporary accounts of crime and punishment.
How to Be a Victorian (Print Book) by Ruth Goodman
Publication Date: 2014

Ruth Goodman believes in getting her hands dirty. Drawing on her own adventures living in re-created Victorian conditions, Goodman serves as our bustling and fanciful guide to nineteenth-century life. Proceeding from daybreak to bedtime, this charming, illustrative work celebrates the ordinary lives of the most perennially fascinating era of British history.
New A-Z of Empire: A Concise Handbook of British Imperial History (Ebook) by C. Brad Faught
Publication Date: 2011

The British Empire, especially in its late-Victorian heyday, spanned the world and linked a quarter of the world's population to Britain through a shared, official, allegiance to the Crown. In the long history of empires, the British imperial state was among the most powerful ever and a major global player. A New A-Z of Empire...covers over 400 years of British imperial history from the founding of the East India Company in 1600, to the 'First' and 'Second' British Empires, the time of 'High Empire' following the War of American Independence, the unprecedented expansion of the 'Scramble' for Africa, the development of Dominion Status and the history - often turbulent - of decolonization and the growth of Commonwealth.
Routledge Companion to Britain in the Nineteenth Century, 1815-1914 (Ebook) by Chris Cook
Publication Date: 2005

The Routledge Companion to Britain in the Nineteenth Century, 1815-1914 is an accessible and indispensable compendium of essential information on the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Using chronologies, maps, glossaries, an extensive bibliography, a wealth of statistical information, and nearly two hundred biographies of key figures, this clear and concise book provides a comprehensive guide to modern British history from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the outbreak of the First World War.
Taming Cannibals: Race and the Victorians (Ebook) by Patrick Brantlinger
Publication Date: 2011

In Taming Cannibals, Patrick Brantlinger unravels contradictions embedded in the racist and imperialist ideology of the British Empire. For many Victorians, the idea of taming cannibals or civilizing savages was oxymoronic: civilization was a goal that the nonwhite peoples of the world could not attain or, at best, could only approximate, yet the "civilizing mission" was viewed as the ultimate justification for imperialism. Similarly, the supposedly unshakeable certainty of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority was routinely undercut by widespread fears about racial degeneration through contact with "lesser" races or concerns that Anglo-Saxons might be superseded by something superior--an even "fitter" or "higher" race or species...Throughout the wide-ranging, capacious, and rich Taming Cannibals, Brantlinger combines the study of literature with sociopolitical history and postcolonial theory in novel ways.
Victorian Studies Reader (Print Book) by Kelly Boyd and Rohan McWilliam (Editors)
Publication Date: 2007

The Victorian Studies Reader gathers together, in one volume, some of the key pieces on Victorian history, society, and culture. The book draws on new trends in looking at the Victorian Age and includes sections on: periodization politics consumerism intellectual life sexuality empire.

Finding Books

This list is only a starting point of commonly used books in this area, not a complete list of library books on the subject. To find other books on this subject, use the search box on the library's homepage. To find other books on this subject, use the search box on the library's homepage. The search box defaults to OneSearch. To look for books, toggle over to Books. This will limit your search to books and ebooks.

Finding Books: UVU Fulton Library Homepage
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