A companion to the Victorian novel

• Provides contextual and critical information about the entire range of British fiction published during the Victorian period.
• Explains issues such as Victorian religions, class structure, and Darwinism to those who are unfamiliar with them.
• Comprises original, accessible chapters written by renowned and emerging scholars in the field of Victorian studies.
• Ideal for students and researchers seeking up-to-the-minute coverage of contexts and trends, or as a starting point for a survey course.

William B. Thesing is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. He is the author of The London Muse: Victorian Poetic Responses to the City (1982) and the editor of five volumes in Gale’s Dictionary of Literary Biography: Victorian Prose Writers before 1867 (1986), Victorian Prose Writers after 1867 (1987), Victorian Women Poets (1998), British Short-Fiction Writers, 1880–1914: The Realist Tradition (1994), and Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century British Women Poets (2001). He recently edited Caverns of Night: Coal Mines in Art, Literature, and Film (2000).