Plagiarizing the Victorian novel : imitation, parody, aftertext / Adam Abraham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Abraham, Adam, 1970- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 118.

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 118

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English fiction.

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

Plagiarism.

Parody.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 282 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Summary:

How can we tell plagiarism from an allusion? How does imitation differ from parody? Where is the line between copyright infringement and homage? Questions of intellectual property have been vexed long before our own age of online piracy. In Victorian Britain, enterprising authors tested the limits of literary ownership by generating plagiaristic publications based on leading writers of the day. Adam Abraham illuminates these issues by examining imitations of three novelists: Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and George Eliot. Readers of Oliver Twist may be surprised to learn about Oliver Twiss, a penny serial that usurped Dickens's characters. Such imitative publications capture the essence of their sources; the caricature, although crude, is necessarily clear. By reading works that emulate three nineteenth-century writers, this innovative study enlarges our sense of what literary knowledge looks like: to know a particular author means to know the sometimes bad imitations that the author inspired.

Contents:

The Pickwick phenomenon

Charles Dickens and the pseudo-Dickens industry

Parody, or, the art of writing Edward Bulwer Lytton

Thackeray versus Bulwer versus Bulwer: parody and appropriation

Being George Eliot: imitation, imposture, and identity

Postscript, posthumous papers, aftertexts.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 09 Aug 2019).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-108-60061-1

1-108-65619-6

1-108-67540-9