EAN: 9783319495491

VICTORIAN NARRATIVES OF THE RECENT PAST - HELEN...

This book explains why narrating the recent past is always challenging  and shows how it was
particularly fraught in the nineteenth century. The legacy of Romantic historicism  the
professionalization of the historical discipline  and even the growth of social history  all
heightened the stakes. This book brings together Victorian histories and novels to show how
these parallel genres responded to the challenges of contemporary history writing in divergent
ways. Many historians shrank from engaging with controversial recent events. This study
showcases the work of those rare historians who defied convention  including the polymath
Harriet Martineau  English nationalist J. R. Green  and liberal enthusiast Spencer Walpole. A
striking number of popular Victorian novels are retrospective. This book argues that Charlotte
Brontë  Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot's novels of the recent past are long overdue
recognition as genuinely historical novels. By focusing on provincial communities  these
novelists reveal undercurrents invisible to national narratives  and intervene in debates about
women's contribution to history.

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