The provincial fiction of Mitford, Gaskell and Eliot /
Considers the interrelated careers of three highly significant women writers of the nineteenth century. Traces a chain of influence among three highly significant women writers of the nineteenth century, including Mary Russell Mitford, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot. Reconsiders the literary cat...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Edinburgh :
Edinburgh University Press,
[2023].
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| Series: | Nineteenth-century and neo-Victorian cultures.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Considers the interrelated careers of three highly significant women writers of the nineteenth century. Traces a chain of influence among three highly significant women writers of the nineteenth century, including Mary Russell Mitford, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot. Reconsiders the literary category of provincialism and the genre of the village story with due consideration of a range of publication formats and contexts. Works across literary periods to offer innovative rereadings of several important Romantic- and Victorian-era texts. Combines nineteenth-century cultural-historical and literary analysis to advance recent revaluations of liberalism by considering its emotive and not just its ratiocinative dimensions. In this lively and illuminating work, Kevin A. Morrison offers a reassessment of Mary Russell Mitford's and Elizabeth Gaskell's provincial fiction, sometimes deprecated within a genre frequently considered 'minor literature' and demonstrates the importance of their work to the development of George Eliot's liberalism in the age of high realism. Although Gaskell was influenced by Mitford, and Eliot by Gaskell, only a handful of scholars have considered the affinities and resemblances among them. None have done so in depth. Establishing a chain of influence, this book examines the three authors' interrelated careers, the challenges they encountered in achieving distinction within the literary sphere, the various pressures exerted on them by publishers, reviewers and editors and the career-enhancing possibilities afforded, and the limitations imposed, by different modes of publication. Attending to publication history, genre and narrative voice, Morrison suggests new ways to think about provincialism, liberalism and women's networked authorship in the nineteenth century. |
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| Physical Description: | xi, 308 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 1399516086 9781399516082 |