Nostalgia and Recollection in Victorian Culture

by A. Colley

Overview

This book is about a group of Victorian British writers and artists (Darwin, Stevenson, Gaskell, Ruskin, Pater, Brown and Turner) whose work emerges from recollection and whose texts embody the experience of nostalgia. The study concentrates on the longing for a past that traverses the span of these writers' and artists' own lifetime. It examines their particular experience of the nostalgic moment and provides an occasion to re-examine the idea of nostalgia and to reflect on the act of recollection.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312216641
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	10/07/1998
Edition description:	1998
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

Ann C. Colley is Professor of English at the State University College of New York at Buffalo.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Introduction PART I: VOYAGES AND EXILE Nostalgia and the Voyage of the Beagle The Last of England and the Representation of Longing R.L. Stevenson's Nationalism and the Dualities of Exile The 'Shaking, Uncertain Ground' of Elizabeth Gaskell's Narratives PART II: CHILDHOOD SPACES The Landscape of A Child's Garden of Verses Rooms without Mirrors: The Childhood Interiors of Ruskin, Pater, and Stevenson PART III: THE IDEA OF RECOLLECTION R.L. Stevenson and the Idea of Recollection From the Vignette to the Rectangular: Bergson, Turner, and Remembrance Afterthoughts: Nostalgia Endnotes Index

Editorial Reviews

This is a fine work: insightful, novel, and elegantly written. Choice

From the Publisher

Examines the work of a group of British writers and artists whose work emerges from recollection and whose texts embody the experience of nostalgia, such as Charles Darwin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Elizabeth Gaskell, and J. M. W. Turner. Concentrates on the longing for a past that traverses the span of these writers' and artists' own lives, and examines their particular experience of the nostalgic moment. Also re- examines the idea of nostalgia itself and reflects on the act of recollection that accompanied it. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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