Romantic Friendship in Victorian Literature

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.