Product Description

In an important contribution to the developing field of interdisciplinary studies in the Humanities, Ledger and Luckhurst make available to students and scholars a large body of non-literary texts which richly configure the variegated cultural history of the fin-de-siècle years. That history is here shown to inaugurate many enduring critical and cultural concerns, with sections on Degeneration, Outcast London, The Metropolis, The New Woman, Literary Debates, The New Imperialism, Socialism, Anarchism, Scientific Naturalism, Psychology, Psychical Research, Sexology, Anthropology and Racial Science. Each section begins with an Introduction and closes with Editorial Notes which carefully situate individual texts within a wider cultural landscape.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55478 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 392 pages

About the Author
Sally Ledger is Senior Lecturer in English, Birkbeck College, University of London

Roger Luckhurst is Lecturer in English, Birkbeck College, University of London

Customer Reviews

A wonderfully presented account of Victorian writing.
The Reader in cultural history was very well-presented. The student is introduced to the major, sometimes conflicting, debates of the nineteenth century fin de siecle.

The fin de siecle debates featured in this book centered on 'degeneration' and 'progress'. While some writers felt that the late nineteenth century was an exciting time to live in - new journalism, literature, social relations - other writers were opposed to these phenomenal changes.

Ledger and Luckhurst bring this debate to life and have organised the arguments in an interesting and comprehensible manner. The introductions they provide for each chapter give useful overviews of an otherwise complex debate.

While this book is dedicated to the nineteenth-century fin de siecle, it becomes clear that some of the ideas presented in the book are not solely confined to the 1880s and '90s. Debates such as 'degeneration' and 'progress' appear in our modern press today and this suggests that fin de siecle is not just a period but a mindset. This book is therefore a must for anyone interested to know more about our own society.

excellent reader covering all the major areas
Although this sounds like an advertiser's blurb, I really am convinced this reader will be useful for any literary/cultural course that covers the last decades of nineteenth-century Britain. It carefully selects a variety of often conflicting but always representative material that is otherwise available only with difficulty, from an extract from Nordau's "Degeneration" and William James's review of it to a part of Karl Pearson's "National life from the Standpoint of Science". I'll be using it for three widely differing Victorian courses this year, concentrating mainly on gender, consumerism, imperialism and "race", and am confident I shall use it for next year's courses too.
Highly recommended.