Comparative Prose 1872–1900
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
Summary
Two pieces of prose fiction selected here represent each year from 1872–1900, in order for the reader to situate the following poems in a broader fin–de–siècle context. The first piece is an extract from a novel or a short story. The second is, usually, ‘non-fictive prose’—an essay, article, autobiography, or other literary tract of the period not always easily accessible to readers, which illuminates some of the wider concerns of the age as whole. Important sensations of the period are also mentioned, such as the Ruskin-Whistler case. Twenty novelists have been selected. Half of these are established Victorian literary figures: Eliot, Hardy, Conrad, Stevenson, Trollope, Meredith, Wilde, Pater, Gissing, and Wells. Hardy and Conrad appear three times, as writers of short stories as well as novels. Robert Louis Stevenson is represented as a poet, as well as in his more familiar capacity as the author of Treasure Island (1883) and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). The other ten novelists are less well known, but are selected on the basis of writing fiction that exemplifies late–nineteenth century imaginative concerns, especially the apocalyptic vision of a utopia or ideal society. This is epitomised in W. H. Mallock's novel, The New Republic.
All the writers are British, with the notable exception of Henry James, whose short story, ‘Daisy Miller’ (1878) was published in England before it appeared in America.
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- Decadent VerseAn Anthology of Late-Victorian Poetry, 1872–1900, pp. 49 - 52Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2009