Victorian Literature

Victorian Literature is a comprehensive and fully annotated anthology with a flexible design that allows teachers and students to pursue traditional or innovative lines of inquiry-from the canon to its extensions and its contexts.

• Represents the period's major writers of prose, poetry, drama, and more, including Tennyson, Arnold, the Brownings, Carlyle, Ruskin, the Rossettis, Wilde, Eliot, and the Brontës
• Promotes an ideologically and culturally varied view of Victorian society with the inclusion of women, working-class, colonial, and gay and lesbian writers
• Incorporates recent scholarship with 5 contextual sections and innovative sub-sections on topics like environmentalism and animal rights; mass literacy and mass media; sex and sexuality;  melodrama and comedy; the Irish question; ruling India and the Indian Mutiny and innovations in print culture
• Emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of the field with a focus on social, cultural, artistic, and historical factors
• Includes a fully annotated companion website for teachers and students offering expanded context sections, additional readings from key writers, appendices, and an extensive bibliography

Victor Shea is Associate Professor of Humanities and English at York University, Canada. He holds degrees from University of Prince Edward Island, University of Toronto, and York University. His research interests include Victorian culture and literature, British Empire and imperialism, American Studies, and literary theory. With William Whitla, he is co-editor of Essays and Reviews: The 1860 Text and its Readings (2000) and co-author of Foundations: Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing (2^nd edition, 2005).

William Whitla is Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar in English and Humanities at York University, Canada.  He holds degrees from University of Toronto, TrinityCollege, and University of Oxford. His research interests include Victorian culture and literature, literary theory, and interdisciplinary studies in medieval and Renaissance studies. He is the author of The English Handbook: A Guide to Literary Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). With Victor Shea, he is co-editor of Essays and Reviews: The 1860 Text and its Readings (2000) and co-author of Foundations: Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing (2^nd edition, 2005).