Victorian Literature and the Victorian State: Character and Governance in a Liberal Society by Lauren Goodlad

This book argues that many of the contradictions on topics such as social welfare, poverty, and the government's ideal role in society inherent in Victorian viewpoints come from the fact that "Victorian Britain was a liberal society"--and that this liberalism cut in two ways to both promote freedom and to insist on state aid as a means of achieving social health (vii). While Goodlad sees a Foucauldian perspective as useful in untangling the different strains of thought in Victorian Society, she finds later Foucault more useful than the genealogical approach of Discipline and Punish. Many of Goodlad's readings focus on pastorship--that is, someone (usually middle class) guiding the poor to better character and better living. She reads Dickens (Oliver Twist, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend), Frances Trollope, Anthony Trollope, George Gissing, and H.G. Wells among others. These readings arrive in conjunction with a careful social history: Goodlad does a nice job of showing the relationship between the literature, its authors' opinions, and the culture in which it was produced. I found her reading of the educational system in Our Mutual Friend particularly helpful. While this book is out of my field (and out of my usual mode of theoretical approach), I found its argument to be cogent and reasonably well supported.

Kept by D.J. Taylor

This book models the novels of Dickens and Collins that it reads like; there are a lot of intertwining plots and characters. We also get to see early police in action (towards the end of the book). None of the main characters are entirely sympathetic, but Taylor has a good sense of the Victorian worlds. I loved the literary allusions. It covers a number of themes that play out in the period: criminality, interest in science, insanity, the role of women. It wasn't quite as good as a genuine Victorian novel, but it was a decent imitation of that kind of plot, and very well written.

Derby Day by D. J. Taylor

This book is written in the style of a Victorian novel: there are many characters whose stories come together around one event: Derby Day. Mr. Happerton (a cad of the worst sort, who has married into a family better than his) buys Tiberius, a fabulous race horse, but decides that he can make more money by losing than by winning. Of course, getting his hands on Tiberius is not the most legal of processes, and the way he gets the money to bet is even worse. There are a number of memorable characters here (although all the best-developed ones are villains), and the story is enthralling, but I wish it were longer. Mrs. Happerton could use much more development, for instance. Still, I'm going to go back to Kept, a Victorian mystery which features the same detective.

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

In this book Nancy Astley thinks she's exchanging her boring life helping in her family's oyster restaurant for a fulfilling one when she leaves home to become dresser to Kitty Butler, music hall sensation. But fame (and love) aren't all they promise to be, and Nan keeps finding that she's gotten the worse end of the bargain as woman after woman betrays her. I enjoyed this coming of age story, but like Fingersmith, Waters really only follows one plotline throughout.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

This book intentionally points toward Dickens, especially Oliver Twist, set in part among a den of thieves. As the plot unwinds, it's a plot worthy of a Dickens novel--in its crosses and double-crosses and complicated twists. However, while the best of Dickens's novels have many such plots interweaving, this novel has no real subplots. It's still an enjoyable read. Booker shortlisted, 2002.

Angels and Insects by A.S. Byatt

This book pairs two loosely-linked novellas, one about an entomologist who finds himself trapped by domestic concerns after a shipwreck destroys his collections, and one about a group of Victorian spiritualists attempting to communicate with the dead who are linked to Tennyson and Arthur Henry Hallam. I liked the first part better than the second part, which seemed disjointed to me. This effort is as good as neither Possession nor The Children's Book.

At Home by Bill Bryson

The idea behind this book--tracing the history of privacy and domesticity--through the rooms of a house is fascinating. Many of the anecdotes Bryson tells are intriguing and his style is commendable--authoritative with a touch of humor. However, as the book wore on, I found it difficult to discern the principles upon which it all hung together--in the end it felt like a hodgepodge of facts Bryson had found and stories he wanted to tell.

A Stranger in Mayfair by Charles Finch

Although I hadn't gotten the exact details right, I knew the linchpin on which this mystery turns early in the book. This book seems as much concerned about how Lenox manages the conflicting pressures of Parliament and detecting as the detective work itself. I found the characters more tedious in this outing--especially because Lenox and Lady Jane (his new wife) are utterly unwilling to say anything meaningful to each other the whole book.

The Novel and the Police by D.A. Miller

This collection of essays probes the relationship between forms of official and unofficial discipline and the Victorian novel. Miller takes Foucault's work on power and discipline as a starting point and applies those theories to the novel. Among the books that Miller offers convincing readings of are Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Bleak House, Barchester Towers, and The Eustace Diamonds. I found Miller's insights about the relationship between the police and the criminal and his analysis of the policing powers in the novels particularly convincing.

A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Houseman

This collection of poetry is mostly written in a pastoral mode. The verse itself is not bad, but sort of what I would expect for Victorian poetry. Mostly it's short and lyric, and has to do with people courting, dying young, and serving in war. I particularly like the penultimate poem, which I have come across before, whose first line is "Terrence, this is stupid stuff." There are intriguing contrasts between the Shropshire countryside and urban London, and between nature, which will continue to exist, and people, who die quickly.

The Fleet Street Murders by Charles Finch

I enjoyed this book, but I am starting to get the sense that these books are as much interested in telling about the development of characters (the detective's run for Parliament, his courtship of his neighbor, his friendship with a doctor who has let success drive him to drinking) than about the mystery itself--indeed, I felt that the mystery was harder for the reader to solve along because in this case, Lenox is far more interested in getting himself elected to Parliament by a town he's never visited before in his life (and NO, the defense of virtual representation was NOT convincing) than in solving the mystery. This book was enjoyable, but it's no substitute for Agatha Christie.

The September Society by Charles Finch

In this book Charles Lennox returns to investigate a case of missing boys at Oxford, which seems to relate to military affairs of twenty years ago in India. The main case itself was quite interesting and well-plotted, if a bit opaque (there was a fair amount of explanation left at the end of the book), but the romantic subplot struck me as silly.

The Evil Guest by J. Sheridan LeFanu

I really enjoyed this book, though it didn't strike me as a typical murder mystery at the time I read it. I found LeFanu to be really effective at creating a creepy, gothic atmosphere. Although I could see the different strands coming together, the end itself was still a bit of a surprise. Creepy and brilliant!

The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker by Leanna Renee Hieber

I wasn't overly awed by this book. The quality of the prose itself was not terribly high, and I found the plot a contrived mish-mash of mythological and fantasy plots. I though the relationship between Alexi and Percy was creepy and underdeveloped. I liked the end better than the beginning, but it was not a great book. I am not sure if I'll be reading the sequel or not.

A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch

In this mystery, wealthy, younger son Charles Lenox occupies his time by solving mysteries with more skill than Scotland Yard. He's called upon by his old friend (and transparently-designed love interest) Lady Jane Gray to investigate the death of her former maid, an apparent suicide. Of course, things get tricky very quickly. I thought the plot was handled well and ended up being both inventive and surprising. Lenox himself seems to be modeled mostly on Dorothy Sayer's magnificent Lord Peter Wimsey (with a fair amount of success), with a side of Sherlock Holmes (especially in his predilection for using small facts to draw surprising conclusion) thrown in for good measure. There are parts that get awkward (especially long-winded digressions about why Lenox is such good friends with a woman, or his butler), but it's generally well-done, and I'll be reading more of these books.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

This book juxtaposes the history of the 1893 Columbian Exposition and its architect Daniel Burnham and the author's exposition of a series of crimes committed around the time of the fair by a psychopath who called himself H.H. Holmes. I thought this book worked really well. Larson does a good job with the historical aspects, and makes a convincing case about Holmes's murders as well. I happen to find World's Fairs fascinating, and this book made me really wish I could visit the White City in 1893, see the Midway, and ride on the world's first Ferris wheel. The book also has a lot of footnotes--while it's not the most scholarly book I've ever read, I really appreciated that the author made it possible for readers to trace his work.

The Other Victorians by Steven Marcus

This book is an academic reading of the dark underside of Victorian sexuality. A large portion concerns publication history, a tricky question because so many of the texts that shed light on the topic were published with false names and dates or suppressed entirely. The book relies heavily on the thesis that these materials show the Victorians operated in a pre-psychological world, that is, in a time before Freud demonstrated how the mind affects our bodily impulses. The style of this book is actually quite enjoyable, perhaps because the author has such a clear grasp of and evident affection for more canonical texts; these traits enlighten his reading of the other, less well-known texts that comprise the body of his work.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

This book recounts a famous Victorian murder mystery that fueled detective fiction written by Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. I think Summerscale has done a great job telling the story of the murder. I also appreciated her thoughts on the creation of the detective and the detective hero. I think she gets into a little bit of trouble as she tries too closely to merge the detective hero and Whicher into one overarching figure. She begins to use literary descriptions of detectives as "proof" for elements of Whicher's behavior and attitudes. Overall, though, I think this book is a smart piece of work.

The Melodramatic Imagination by Peter Brooks

In this book, Peter Brooks investigates melodrama as an historical genre that grows, quite literally, out of musical dramas and pantomimes produced in France during the first half of the nineteenth century. He demonstrates that these productions dramatize what he calls the moral occult, or virtue for the sake of virtue. They supposed a Manchiean world view, with two extremes and no middle ground. I found his reading of these early French plays very convincing--he seems to have a strong sense of the genre and the time period. He claims that as nineteenth century drama moves away from the excess of the form, this struggle becomes better set off in the novel. He ends by reading two authors: Balzac and James. Both of these authors receive a general reading before Brooks gives a close reading of Pere Goriot and The Wings of the Dove in his successful demonstration of his theory that while Balzac's melodrama is external, James presents an internal melodrama of consciousness. Although this book does not deal with authors or even genres that particularly interest me, I would go back to this theory and use it if my interests develop in this direction.

How Novels Think by Nancy Armstrong

This book combines intelligent work in theory and history with close readings of a number of novels to illustrate its central thesis, namely that the novel, as a form, makes the concept of the individual, as we understand it today, possible.

Armstrong contends that 18th century novels show how a bad subject chooses to join society and how the self-discipline necessary to do so actually increases freedom. Victorian novels use women to displace man's "savage" characteristics, and to maintain the illusion of the development of mankind in a linear, monogeneic fashion, although vampire and other gothic stories trouble this concept with the possibility of polygenity.

I found this book very smart, and helpful, although sometimes it was difficult for me to follow her arguments. I thought she did a good job of deploying close readings to support her claims.