French Novels and the Victorians
About this ebook
The book reflects on what 'immorality' meant to both critics and the readers they sought to warn, and how the notion was subjected to scrutiny through censorship debates as well as the fictional representations of readers. It also tackles the contemporary preoccupation with literary influence, and explores how the extensive circulation of French fiction in England affected the concept of a 'national' literature. In addition to highlighting the cultural importance of novelists such as Sand, Balzac, and Dumas, this book uncovers the networks and mediums that enabled French novels to cross the Channel, and looks at how the concept of 'the French novel' was elaborated, interpreted, and challenged.
About the author
Juliette Atkinson was born in Paris, and grew up in both France and England. She did her BA(Hons) at UCL, and went to Oxford to study the MSt Literature 1900-Present. In 2008, she completed a PhD on Victorian life-writing at UCL (funded by a UCL Research Scholarship), and between 2009 and 2012 she was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. She is now a lecturer in the English department as UCL, where she specialises in the literature of the long 19th century. Her book Victorian Biography Reconsidered (OUP) was published in 2010, and she has written the introduction and notes for The Mill on the Floss and edited Silas Marner, both for Oxford World's Classics.
