Overview

Although Elizabeth Gaskell was influenced by Mary Russell Mitford, and George Eliot by Gaskell, only a small number of scholars have considered the affinities and resemblances among all three writers of provincial fiction, and none have done so in depth. Establishing a chain of influence, this book considers Mitford, Gaskell, and Eliot's interrelated careers, including the challenges they encountered in achieving distinction within the literary sphere, and the various pressures exerted on them by publishers, reviewers, and editors. It also analyses the career-enhancing possibilities afforded by different modes of publication-including periodicals, anthologies, the three-volume novel, and monthly and bimonthly instalments-as well as their concomitant limitations. In so doing, the book offers a reassessment of Mitford's and Gaskell's provincial fiction, which has been frequently derided as a 'minor literature'. It also demonstrates the importance of their work to the development of Eliot's liberalism in the age of high realism.

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9781399516082

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""Brilliantly discerning, Kevin Morrison tracks the ways, over Britain's unsettling century of change, that three notable women writers seized the potential of periodical and serial publication to engage the rural village with the burgeoning metropolis, by activating reflective nostalgia to image the countryside as the national home. An absorbing narrative, engagingly told."" -Robert L. Patten, Rice University

"""Brilliantly discerning, Kevin Morrison tracks the ways, over Britain's unsettling century of change, that three notable women writers seized the potential of periodical and serial publication to engage the rural village with the burgeoning metropolis, by activating reflective nostalgia to image the countryside as the national home. An absorbing narrative, engagingly told."" -Robert L. Patten, Rice University"

Author Information

Kevin A. Morrison is Provincial Chair Professor, University Distinguished Professor, and Professor of British Literature in the School of Foreign Languages at Henan University. He is the author of the Modern Language Association award winning Victorian Liberalism and Material Culture (2018), as well as A Micro-History of Victorian Liberal Parenting (2018) and Study-Abroad Pedagogy, Dark Tourism, and Historical Reenactment (2019).

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