This volume presents fresh approaches to classic Victorian fiction from 1830 to 1900. Consisting of a series of original essays written by prominent specialists in the field, it opens up the cultural world in which the Victorian novel was written and read. The 12 contributors provide new perspectives on how Victorian fiction relates to a range of important contemporary contexts, including class, sexuality, empire, psychology, law, visual culture, biology and the conditions of authorship. Their contributions cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, enabling readers to understand the Victorian novel's complex engagements with diverse aspects of nineteenth-century society.

Francis O'Gorman is Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Leeds. He has written widely on Victorian poetry and non-fictional prose, including the books John Ruskin (1999), Late Ruskin: New Contexts (2001), and the Victorian Novel (2002) in the Blackwell Critical Guide Series, and also co-edited the collection Ruskin and Gender (2002). He has published on Milton, Robert Browning, Michael Field, Charles Kingsley, Robert Frost, Henrietta Huxley, Victorian agnosticism, Victorian masculinities, and co-edited a collection of essays on Margaret Oliphant (1999) and on Landscape, Writing and Community (2001). His most recent book, Victorian Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, was published by Blackwell in 2004.