Victorian investments : new perspectives on finance and culture / edited by Nancy Henry & Cannon Schmitt.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Henry, Nancy, 1965-

Schmitt, Cannon.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Investments--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Investments.

Finance--Social aspects--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Finance.

Finance in literature.

Physical Description:

viii, 250 p. : ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Victorian Investments explores the relationship between the financial system in Great Britain and other aspects of Victorian society and culture. Building on the special journal issue of Victorian Studies devoted to Victorian investments, this volume is the first to define an interdisciplinary field of study emerging in the space between Marxist critiques of capitalism and traditional histories of business and economics. The contributors demonstrate how phenomena such as the expansion of colonial and foreign markets, the broadening of the investor base through the advent of limited liability, and the rise of financial journalism gave rise to a "culture of investment" that affected Victorian Britons at every level of society and influenced every kind of cultural production. Drawing together work by prominent historians as well as literary and cultural critics, Victorian Investments both defines the methodologies and perspectives that characterize an existing body of scholarship and pushes that scholarship in new directions, demonstrating the signal role of economic developments in Victorian culture and society.

Contents:

Cover

Contents

Introduction: Finance, Capital, Culture

PART 1. A Prehistory of Victorian Investment

1. "Signum Rememorativum, Demonstrativum, Prognostikon":Finance Capital, the Atlantic, and Slavery

PART 2. Cultures of Investment

2. Writing about Finance in Victorian England: Disclosure andSecrecy in the Culture of Investment

3. The First Fund Managers: Life Insurance Bonuses inVictorian Britain

4. Limited Liability, Market Democracy, and the SocialOrganization of Production in Mid- Nineteenth- CenturyBritain

5. Fair Enterprise or Extravagant Speculation: Investment,Speculation, and Gambling in Victorian England

6. Ladies of the Ticker: Women, Investment, and Fraud inEngland and America, 1850-1930

PART 3. Fictions of Investment

7. Trollope in the Stock Market: Irrational Exuberance and ThePrime Minister

8. "Rushing into Eternity": Suicide and Finance in VictorianFiction

9. Rumor, Shares, and Novelistic Form: Joseph Conrad'sNostromo

Afterword

Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [221]-240) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-39248-4

9786612392481

0-253-00343-1

OCLC:

502980578