The commodification of identity in Victorian narrative : autobiography, sensation, and the literary marketplace / Sean Grass, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grass, Sean, 1971- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 121.

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; [121]

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English prose literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English prose literature.

Autobiography.

Capitalism and literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xi, 279 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Summary:

"In the first half of the nineteenth century autobiography became, for the first time, an explicitly commercial genre. Drawing together quantitative data on the Victorian book markets, insights from the business ledgers of Victorian publishers and close readings of mid-century novels, Sean Grass demonstrates the close links between these genres and broader Victorian textual and material cultures. This book offers fresh perspectives on major works by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade, while also featuring archival research that reveals the volume, diversity, and marketability of Victorian autobiographical texts for the first time. Grass presents life-writing not as a stand-alone genre, but as an integral part of a broader movement of literary, cultural, legal and economic practices through which the Victorians transformed identity into a textual object of capitalist exchange"-- Provided by publisher.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Grass, Sean, 1971- Autobiography, sensation, and the commodification of identity in Victorian narrative

ISBN:

9781108484459

110848445X

OCLC:

1122688997