Synopses & Reviews
Review
"This book is a brilliant study of the impact of the controversies about social, material, and spiritual well-being that accompanied the expansion of industrial production in 19th-century England. This 'Condition of England Debate' engulfed every area of English intellectual and cultural life and changed the nature of many disciplines. Narrative fiction, especially the novel, whenever it became part of the discourse over industrialism underwent basic structural changes. Using the 'Industrial Novels' of Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Kingsley, Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, the author demonstrates with profound skill this relation between social change and change in literary form." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)