This volume presents fresh approaches to classic Victorian fiction from 1830-1900.

• Opens up for the reader the cultural world in which the Victorian novel was written and read.
• Crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries.
• Provides fresh perspectives on how Victorian fiction relates to different contexts, such as class, sexuality, empire, psychology, law and biology.

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.