This inspiring survey challenges conventional ways of viewing the Victorian novel.<ul><li>Provides time maps and overviews of historical and social contexts.<li>Considers the relationship between the Victorian novel and historical, religious and bibliographic writing.<li>Features short biographies of over forty Victorian authors, including Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Robert Louis Stevenson.<li>Offers close readings of over 30 key texts, among them Charlotte Brontë's <i>Jane Eyre</i> (1847) and Bram Stoker's <i>Dracula</i> (1897), as well as key presences, such as John Bunyan's <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> (Pt 1, 1676, Pt 2, 1684).<li>Also covers topics such as colonialism, scientific speculation, the psychic and the supernatural, and working class reading.</ul>