Reading the Victorian Novel

<p><em>Reading the Victorian Novel</em> is a clear and engaging introduction to Victorian fiction.</p><p>In this book Annette Federico invites readers to turn their attention to the bursting imaginations and formal inventiveness of Victorian novelists themselves. Five conventions prevailed in the building of a Victorian novel: serialisation narration plotting description and characterization. Each chapter is rich in examples of these practices and attentive to the historical and cultural contexts that shaped them as well as to the responses and judgments of Victorian readers and contemporary scholars. Federico keeps the focus on the writer’s choices and the reader’s experience––on the meeting of minds and imaginations against the backdrop of history.</p><p><em>Reading the Victorian Novel</em> is an appreciative and discerning guide for anyone with an interest in the resonant and vibrant worlds of nineteenth-century fiction.</p>