Guides: ENG 380 Victorian Lives and Afterlives (Topics in Literature): Home

Online Reference Books

Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window
Access to over 59,100 articles on notable people who shaped British history worldwide, from the 4th century BC to the year 2012. In addition to outlining a person's activities, character, and significance, each article also includes dates and places of key events, information on parents and spouses, and places of residence.

The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature by Dino Franco Felluga; Pamela Gilbert; Linda K. Hughes (Editorial Board Members
ISBN: 1118405382
Publication Date: 2015-08-17
The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature spans the full sweep of literary genres, figures, and global reach that define this influential period, blending accessibility with an unmatched breadth of coverage and authoritative scholarship.

Books on Victorian England

A Man's Place: masculinity and the middle-class home in Victorian England by John Tosh
ISBN: 9780585347585
Publication Date: 1999-01-01
Tosh begins by looking at the experience of boyhood, married life, sex and fatherhood in the early decades of the nineteenth century - illustrated by case-studies representing a variety of backgrounds - and then contrasts this with the lives of the late Victorian generation.
Victorian Popularizers of Science by Bernard Lightman
ISBN: 9780226481197
Publication Date: 2010-05-01
The ideas of Charles Darwin and his fellow Victorian scientists have had an abiding effect on the modern world. But at the time The Origin of Species was published in 1859, the British public looked not to practicing scientists but to a growing group of professional writers and journalists to interpret the larger meaning of scientific theories in terms they could understand and in ways they could appreciate.
Reading with the Senses in Victorian Literature and Science by David Sweeney Coombs
ISBN: 9780813943428
Publication Date: 2019-11-19
Examining novels and art criticism by George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Vernon Lee, and Walter Pater alongside scientific works by Hermann von Helmholtz, William James, and others, this book shows how Victorian literature offers us ways not just to touch but to grapple with the material realities that Clifford Geertz called the "hard surfaces of life."

Online Books

Thomas Hardy in Context by Phillip Mallett (Editor); Sarah E. Maier (Contribution by)
ISBN: 9780521196482
Publication Date: 2013-03-18
This collection covers the range of Thomas Hardy's works and their social and intellectual contexts, providing a comprehensive introduction to Hardy's life and times.
The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts by Maggie Humm (Editor)
ISBN: 9780748635535
A guide to Virginia Woolf's artistic influences and associations. The Companion explores Woolf's ideas about creativity and the nature of art in the context of the recent 'turn to the visual' in modernist studies with its focus on visual technologies and the significance of material production. The in-depth chapters place Woolf's work in relation to the most influential aesthetic theories and artistic practices, including Bloomsbury aesthetics, art and race, Vanessa Bell and painting, art galleries, theatre, music, dance, fashion, entertaining, garden and book design, broadcasting, film, and photography.
Robert Louis Stevenson: writer of boundaries by Richard Ambrosini; Richard Dury
ISBN: 0299212238
Publication Date: 2006-04-01
Reinstates Stevenson at the center of critical debate and demonstrates the sophistication of his writings and the present relevance of his kaleidoscopic achievements.
The Oxford History of the British Empire - The Nineteenth Century by Andrew Porter (Editor); Wm. Roger Louis (Editor)
ISBN: 9780199246786
Publication Date: 2001-09-20
The Oxford History of the British Empire is a major new assessment of the Empire in the light of recent scholarship and the progressive opening of historical records. Volume III covers the long nineteenth century, from the achievement of American independence in the 1780s to the eve of world war in 1914. This was the period of Britain's greatest expansion as both empire-builder and dominant world power.

Timeline

The people's chronology : a year-by-year record of human events from prehistory to the present by The people's chronology : a year-by-year record of human events from prehistory to the present
ISBN: 9781414401409
Publication Date: 2005 (3rd ed)
Presents a year-by-year record of human events from prehistory to the present. Each chronological chapter is further organized by era or year, and within each year by 33 standard subject categories that feature not only political events and wars, but also events in the arts and humanities, education, transportation, science and medicine, and social trend

Course Description

Throughout the long nineteenth century and into the twentieth, challenges to received beliefs, and the growing influence of the sciences of man – anthropology, sociology, psychology – compelled Victorian men and women to defend, redefine, and reconsider the nature of human identity. Increasingly they were forced to address new questions, about the meaning of the past, the idea of the good life, and the possibility of life after death. Some writers sought to find meaning and value in an ever more secular world; others reached out to alternative spiritualities, turning to the philosophies of the east or to ancient belief systems. The tension between these two positions, the one focused on the present, the other looking to an ‘afterlife’, however broadly defined, would change the way writers came to understand themselves, the role and power of literature, and their legacy to the future.

Other InfoGuides of Interest

Librarian

Elizabeth Parang

elizabeth.parang@pepperdine.edu

Contact:

Pepperdine University Libraries
24255 Pacific Coast Hwy
Malibu, CA 90263

310-506-4046

Subjects: African American Studies, American Studies, Art, Art History, Creative Writing, Education, Humanities, Music, Psychology, Theatre Arts

Journals

Nineteenth-Century Literature
Scholars of literary history and theory turn to Nineteenth-Century Literature for the newest research and thought on all English-language writers of the nineteenth century. Every issue offers 150 pages of important articles, a convenient section of article abstracts, review essays, and an annotated bibliography of recent books published in the field of nineteenth-century literature.
Victorian Studies [Vol. 42, no. 2 (1999/00) through current issue]
Victorian Studies, which began publication in 1956, is devoted to the study of English culture of the Victorian period. It includes interdisciplinary articles on comparative literature, social and political history, and the histories of education, philosophy, fine arts, economics, law, and science.
Victorian Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Victorian Studies [Vol. 35 (2009) through current issue]PREVIEW: REQUEST ON ILL
"Our mandate is to publish the best original international research in this interdisciplinary field, as well as to provide critical reviews of new books in Victorian studies by experts from around the world. Finally, our regular Victorian Review forum provides a unique venue in which diverse scholarly voices may address a topic from multiple points of view."
Victorian Literature and Culture [Vol. 27 (1999) through current issue]
Encourages high quality original work concerned with all areas of Victorian literature and culture, including music and the fine arts. The journal presents work at the cutting edge of current research, including exciting new studies in untouched subjects or new methodologies.
SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 [Vol. 39 (1999) through current issue ]
SEL focuses on four fields of British literature in rotating, quarterly issues: English Renaissance, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Restoration and Eighteenth Century, and Nineteenth Century. The editors select learned, readable papers that contribute significantly to the understanding of British literature from 1500 to 1900.
Victorian Poetry [Vol. 38 (2000) through current issue]
Founded in 1962 to further the aesthetic study of the poetry of the Victorian period (1830-1914) in Britain, Victorian Poetry today publishes articles from a broad range of theoretical/critical angles, including but not confined to new historicism, feminism, and social/cultural issues. The journal has expanded its purview from the major figures of Victorian England (Tennyson, Browning, the Rossettis, etc.) to a wider compass of poets of all classes and gender indentifications in nineteenth-century Britain and the Commonwealth.