Carolyn Oulton

Adrienne E. Gavin

Concentrating on a period of significant social and political change and exploring both canonical and newly rediscovered texts, this book critically assess the changing culture of the late-Victorian period as represented by a range of women writers through a range of essays by leading academics in the field and cutting-edge work by newer scholars.

Authors of Change

Writing Women of the Fin de Siècle

Carolyn Oulton considers same-sex romantic friendships between men and women in novels and poetry by authors such as Dickens, Tennyson, Disraeli, Charlotte Brontë, and Braddon, while also tracing developments in attitudes from mid-century to the fin-de-siécle revealed in conduct manuals, periodicals, and religious treatises. Her book is a persuasive challenge to those who view mid-Victorian England, existing in a state of blissful pre-Freudian innocence, as unproblematically accommodating of passionate same-sex relationships.

Romantic Friendship in Victorian Literature

Jerome K. Jerome

First published ananymously in 1892, 'Weeds' marked a significant departure from the humour that made Jerome K. Jerome famous. This disturbing story of sexual corruption shows marital fidelity as a perpetual struggle, with Dick Selwyn falling for the attractions of his wife's young cousin, Jessie.

A Story in Seven Chapters

Weeds

Mary Cholmondeley

" 'Diana Tempest' is a book to be read. It is more-it is a book to be kept and read again, for its characters will not pass into limbo with this year's fashions. It will stand in the front ranks of fiction for some time to come." - "St. James's Gazette" When Mr. Tempest dies, the family fortune and estate pass to his son, John, whom everyone except John himself knows to be illegitimate. Colonel Tempest, his spendthrift son Archie, and his beautiful daughter Diana find themselves cut off, and Colonel Tempest is bitterly resentful. One night, in a drunken stupor, he agrees to a bet, by which he will pay 10,000 if he should ever succeed to the Tempest estate. By the time he realizes that the effect of this wager was to place a bounty on John's head, it is too late-and attempts begin to be made on John's life! Meanwhile, Diana, strong and independent, has declared that she will never marry . . . but as she becomes closer with her cousin, her sentiments start to waver. And when John learns of his own illegitimacy, what will happen to his burgeoning relationship with Diana and his claim to the Tempest fortune? First published in 1893, "Diana Tempest" was one of Mary Cholmondeley's most popular novels. Part sensation novel, part romance, part 'New Woman' novel, "Diana Tempest" remains a thrilling story. This new Valancourt Books edition, which rescues this long out-of-print classic from obscurity, features a new introduction and notes by Cholmondeley expert Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton.

Diana Tempest

This study explores the ways in which Dickens’s published work and his thousands of letters intersect, to shape and promote particular myths of the reading experience, as well as redefining the status of the writer. It shows that the boundaries between private and public writing are subject to constant disruption and readjustment, as recipients of letters are asked to see themselves as privileged readers of coded text or to appropriate novels as personal letters to themselves. Imaginative hierarchies are both questioned and ultimately reinforced, as prefaces and letters function to create a mythical reader who is placed in imaginative communion with the writer of the text. But the written word itself becomes increasingly unstable, through its association in the later novels with evasion, fraud and even murder.

Dickens and the Myth of the Reader

Carolyn W. De La L. Oulton, Dr

The life of Jerome K. Jerome, (1859-1927) author of "Three Men in a Boat, " has been left unexplored. Oulton unearths hitherto unknown details of his early life in Walsall and follows his momentous move to the Fairy City of London, where a formative encounter with Charles Dickens influenced his choice of profession.

Carolyn Oulton

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