Vagrancy in the Victorian age : representing the wandering poor in nineteenth-century literature and culture / Alistair Robinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Robinson, Alistair (English teacher), author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

Tramps in literature.

Tramps--England.

Tramps.

Tramps in art.

England--Civilization--19th century.

England.

Civilization.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xi, 254 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Summary:

"Vagrants were everywhere in Victorian culture. They wandered through novels and newspapers, photographs, poems and periodicals, oil paintings and illustrations. They appeared in a variety of forms in a variety of places: Gypsies and hawkers tramped the country, casual paupers and loafers lingered in the city, and vagabonds and beachcombers roved the colonial frontiers. Uncovering the rich Victorian taxonomy of nineteenth-century vagrancy for the first time, this interdisciplinary study examines how assumptions about class, gender, race and environment shaped a series of distinct vagrant types. At the same time it broaches new ground by demonstrating that rural and urban conceptions of vagrancy were repurposed in colonial contexts. Representational strategies circulated globally as well as locally, and were used to articulate shifting fantasies and anxieties about mobility, poverty and homelessness. These are traced through an extensive corpus of canonical, ephemeral and popular texts as well as a variety of visual forms."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1.1. Vagrancy Laws

1.2. Demographics

pt. I THE COUNTRY

1. Gypsies, Hawkers and Handicraft Tramps

1.1. Picturing Itinerants in the Periodical Press

1.2. George Borrow

1.3. Lavengro and the Picturesque

2. Poachers

2.1. The Poacher's Progress

2.2. Radicalism, Poaching and The Chimes

2.3. Kingsley, Carew and the Condition of England

pt. II THE CITY

3. Casual Paupers

3.1. Metropolitan Vagrancy

3.2. Casuals Rejected: Kingsley 1848 and Dickens 1856

3.3. Casuals Relieved: Fildes 1869 and 1874

4. Loafers

4.1. Solutions to the Social Problem

4.2. H. G. Wells and The Time Machine

pt. III THE FRONTIER

5. Paupers, Vagabonds and American Indians

5.1. Atlantic Crossings: Pauper Immigrants

5.2. Displaced Nations: American Indians

5.3. Lawless Frontiers: American Vagabonds

6. Beachcombers

6.1. Beachcombers in Print

6.2. Robert Louis Stevenson and The Ebb-Tide.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781316519851

1316519856

9781009011242

1009011243

OCLC:

1260820453