Offers a deep history of style in theory and practice that transforms our understanding of style in the novel.

Demonstrates the importance of attending to literary style in Victorian novels and provides exemplary readings of major novelists.

This new anthology emphasizes Victorian nonfiction prose and verse with a generous, fresh selection of pieces from authors within the canon as well as outside of it.

To many readers, the Victorian novel is synonymous with moral insight and Victorian criticism with moral philistinism. While the novel remains celebrated for its complex treatment of decision-making and sympathy, the evaluative judgments of Victorian critics have been dismissed as thematically reductive and imprecise. However, this study argues that the virtue terms that pervade Victorian discourse--words like "natural," "manly," "lucid," and "sincere"--invest sentence-level stylistic properties with ethical value because they embody aesthetic character. Rather than focus on the novel's action, characters, or themes, these "stylistic virtues" ascribe moral significance to "literariness" itself.

A collection of twenty-three critical essays on English fiction from 1830 to 1880.

Excerpts from criticism of the works of novelists, poets, playwrights, and other creative writers, 1900-1960.