The Silver Fork Novel: Fashionable Fiction in the Age of Reform
In the early nineteenth century there was a sudden vogue for novels centring on the glamour of aristocratic social and political life. Such novels, attractive as they were to middle-class readers, were condemned by contemporary critics as dangerously seductive, crassly commercial, designed for the 'masses' and utterly unworthy of regard. Until recently, silver-fork novels have eluded serious consideration and been overshadowed by authors such as Jane Austen. They were influenced by Austen at their very deepest levels, but were paradoxically drummed out of history by the very canon-makers who were using Austen's name to establish their own legitimacy. This first modern full-length study of the silver-fork novel argues that these novels were in fact tools of persuasion, novels deliberately aimed at bringing the British middle classes into an alliance with an aristocratic program of political reform.
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The Silver Fork Novel: Fashionable Fiction in the Age of Reform
In the early nineteenth century there was a sudden vogue for novels centring on the glamour of aristocratic social and political life. Such novels, attractive as they were to middle-class readers, were condemned by contemporary critics as dangerously seductive, crassly commercial, designed for the 'masses' and utterly unworthy of regard. Until recently, silver-fork novels have eluded serious consideration and been overshadowed by authors such as Jane Austen. They were influenced by Austen at their very deepest levels, but were paradoxically drummed out of history by the very canon-makers who were using Austen's name to establish their own legitimacy. This first modern full-length study of the silver-fork novel argues that these novels were in fact tools of persuasion, novels deliberately aimed at bringing the British middle classes into an alliance with an aristocratic program of political reform.
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The Silver Fork Novel: Fashionable Fiction in the Age of Reform

The Silver Fork Novel: Fashionable Fiction in the Age of Reform

by Edward Copeland
The Silver Fork Novel: Fashionable Fiction in the Age of Reform

The Silver Fork Novel: Fashionable Fiction in the Age of Reform

by Edward Copeland

Hardcover

$127.00 
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Overview

In the early nineteenth century there was a sudden vogue for novels centring on the glamour of aristocratic social and political life. Such novels, attractive as they were to middle-class readers, were condemned by contemporary critics as dangerously seductive, crassly commercial, designed for the 'masses' and utterly unworthy of regard. Until recently, silver-fork novels have eluded serious consideration and been overshadowed by authors such as Jane Austen. They were influenced by Austen at their very deepest levels, but were paradoxically drummed out of history by the very canon-makers who were using Austen's name to establish their own legitimacy. This first modern full-length study of the silver-fork novel argues that these novels were in fact tools of persuasion, novels deliberately aimed at bringing the British middle classes into an alliance with an aristocratic program of political reform.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780521513333
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 06/21/2012
Series: Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture , #81
Pages: 308
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.09(h) x 0.91(d)

About the Author

Edward Copeland is Emeritus Professor of English at Pomona College, Claremont, California.

Table of Contents

1. Cultural contexts; 2. Edgeworth, Burney and Austen; 3. Reform and the silver fork novel; 4. Newspapers and the silver fork novel; 5. The topography of silver fork London; 6. Performing reform, silver fork heroines.
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