"The Impersonating 'I': Self and Narrative in Victorian Literature"
Bibliography, English 515, Spring 1999
Note: This is an extremely idiosyncratic and incomplete bibliography, listing primarily works that I think you might not find otherwise, or that I'm especially eager that you not miss. Some are older but still valuable; others are books which include discussions of a particular author or text but might not turn up in a subject search. You do not need to choose your secondary text from this list. In fact, do not let this be a substitute for some sustained library research: become familiar with the MLA Bibliography online (though Ovid), check the card catalogs, and be creative about searching (that is, don't stop with an author or title search, but explore related subjects, etc.).
Background on the Victorian Period
Brown, Julia Prewitt. A Reader's Guide to the Nineteenth-Century English Novel. NY: Macmillan, 1985.
Gilmour, Robin. The Victorian Period: the intellectual and cultural context of English Literature 1830-1890. London: Longman, 1993.
Houghton, Walter. The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870. New Haven: Yale UP, 1957 (1985).
Mitchell, Sally. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. NY: Garland, 1988.
The Victorian Web, at http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/victorian/victov.html, has interesting essays and timelines for the Victorian period. You can search by author or keyword.
Works on Victorian Autobiography and the Autobiographical Impulse
Buckley, Jerome H. The turning key: autobiography and the subjective impulse since 1800. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.
Fleishman, Avrom. Figures of Autobiography: the language of self-writing in Victorian and modern England. Berkeley: UC Press, 1983.
Landow, George P. Approaches to Victorian Autobiography. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1979.
Machann, Clinton. The genre of autobiography in Victorian literature. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 1994.
J.S. Mill
See essays in Fleishman and Landow.
Thomas Carlyle
See essays in Fleishman and Landow.
Tennyson, G.B. Sartor Called Resartus: the genesis, structure, and style of Thomas Carlyle's first major work. Princeton: Princeton UP 1965.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
See Landow.
Peltason, Timothy. Reading In Memoriam. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985.
Sacks, Peter. The English Elegy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985.
Charlotte Brontë
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.
Charles Dickens
Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. NY: Knopf, 1984.
Great Expectations, ed. Janice Carlisle. (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism). Boston & NY: Bedford, 1996.
E.B. Browning
Case, Alison. "Gender and Narration in Aurora Leigh." Victorian Poetry, vol. 29, no. 1, Spring 1991. 17-32.
Cooper, Helen. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Woman and Artist. Chapel Hill: UNC P, 1988.
Kaplan, Cora. "Introduction." Aurora Leigh and Other Poems. London: The Women's Press, 1978.
Mary Shelley
Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. NY: Routledge, 1988.
Wilkie Collins.
Pykett, Lyn, ed. Wilkie Collins. NY; St. Martin's, 1998.
Robert Browning
Hassett, Constance W. The Elusive Self in the Poetry of Robert Browning. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1982.
Markus, Julia. Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. NY: Knopf, 1995.
Emily Brontë
Boone, Joseph Allen. Tradition Counter Tradition: Love and the Form of Fiction. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1987.