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  1. Home
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  3. The Silver Fork Novel
  • Cited by 28
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
July 2012
Print publication year:
2012
Online ISBN:
9781139015059
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139015059
Subjects:
Literature, English Literature 1830-1900, English Literature 1700-1830
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (81)
Information

Book description

In the early nineteenth century there was a sudden vogue for novels centering 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.

Awards

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2013

Reviews

'Copeland's reading shows what informed, incisive historicist literary criticism can do.'

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

'Copeland's literary 'search and rescue' effort is thoroughly impressive … Well written, informative, and thoroughly engaging, [his] book offers fertile ground for further sustained study of a genre still largely unplumbed.'

Source: Review 19 (www.nbol-19.org)

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