A Reader's Guide to the Nineteenth-Century English Novel.pdf

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A N INFORMAL
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD
THAT SHAPED THE NOVELS OF
AUSTEN, DICKENS, THACKERAY,
HARDY, ELIOT, AND BRONTE
JULIA PREWITT BROWN
A Reader's Guide to the Nineteenth-Century English Novel
pro-
vides a window on the institutions that are the very fabric of
Victorian fiction: the class and educational systems, the Church
of England, marriage, politics. Using examples drawn from the
works of Hardy, Dickens, Eliot, Austen, Thackeray, Brontë, and
Trollope, Harvard University teacher Julia Prewitt Brown pro-
foundly enriches our reading and deepens our understanding of
many of the world's beloved novels.
Acclaim for Julia Prewitt Brown's
Jane Austen's Novels: Social
Change and Literary Form:
"The book opens up a lot of new and suggestive ways of appre-
ciating just how much Jane Austen made out of the delights,
complexities, and ordeals of courtship and its changing modes
and practices."
—
The New York Times Book Review
"This is a highly intelligent book, full of good things—a clever
book which will provoke thought."
—The Times Literary Supplement,
London
"This is an important book and provides a valuable'corrective to
the many Austen studies that consider Jane Austen's subjects
unworthy of her genius."
—The
Yale Review
"Mrs. Brown's superb critical intelligence and analyses sustain
her commonsensical yet penetrating insight into Austen's under-
standing of social structure and social change. The result is a
book which Jane Austen herself might respect."
—Nineteenth-Century
Fiction
MACMILLAN PUBLISHING COMPANY
866 Third Avenue. New York. N.Y 10022
FPT
>*1S.15
The popularity of novels such as
Daw'd
Copperfield
and
Pride and Prej-
udice
shows that the American love
affair with the nineteenth-century
English novel continues unabated. But
the mixture of the familiar and the for-
eign that charms today's readers also
increases the likelihood that they will
miss subtle signals that illuminate the
works for readers more conversant
with English history and society.
A Reader's Guide to the Nineteenth-
Century English Novel
examines the
values of Victorian society—values that
arose from widely held assumptions
about the relative importance of birth
and money, the power of the aristoc-
racy, the place of the Church of
England. Only with an understanding of
the basic assumptions that shaped the
world of Austen and Thackeray are
readers able to appreciate the signifi-
cance of a governess rising to be mis-
tress of a large estate while a lady drops
into barely genteel poverty in
Emma,
or
of Becky Sharpe's statement that she
"could be a good woman" on five
thousand a year—a fortune—in
Vanity
Fair.
(Continued on back flap)
Copyright © 1985 Macmillan Publishing Company, a division of Macmillan, Inc.
(Continued from front flap)
In this accessible social history, Har-
vard University teacher Julia Prewitt
Brown explains why making a good
marriage proved so important to Vic-
torians of both sexes and thus became
a dominant theme in the literature of
the time. Brown also details the func-
tioning of the English educational sys-
tem, the issues in the century's political
reforms, and the restraints under which
Victorian writers labored.
A Reader's Guide to the Nineteenth-
Century English Novel
lends perspec-
tive to the best-loved novels of Dickens,
Hardy, Austen, Brontë, Thackeray, Eliot,
and Trollope. Equipped with a knowl-
edge of such nuances as the difference
between a vicar and a rector, or whether
the untitled gentleman or the impov-
erished baronet makes the more presti-
gious dinner guest, the American
reader is truly able to enjoy the humor,
irony, and pathos offered by the Vic-
torian novel.
Julia Prewitt Brown
teaches History
and English at Harvard University. She is
the author of
Jane Austen's Novels:
Social Change and Literary Form.
A Reader's Guide
to the
Nineteenth-Century
English Novel

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