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OverviewThe Victorian Baby in Print: Infancy, Infant Care, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture explores the representation of babyhood in Victorian Britain. The first study to focus exclusively on the baby in nineteenth-century literature and culture, this critical analysis discusses the changing roles of an iconic figure. A close look at the wide-ranging portrayal of infants and infant care not only reveals how divergent and often contradictory Victorian attitudes to infancy really were, but also challenges persistent clichés surrounding the literary baby that emerged or were consolidated at the time, and which are largely still with us. Drawing on a variety of texts, including novels by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, and Charlotte Yonge, as well as parenting magazines of the time, childrearing manuals, and advertisements, this study analyses how their representations of infancy and infant care utilised and shaped an iconography that has become definitional of the Victorian age itself. The familiar clichés surrounding the Victorian baby have had a lasting impact on the way we see both the Victorians and babies, and a critical reconsideration might also prompt a self-critical reconsideration of the still burgeoning market for infant care advice today. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Tamara S. Wagner (Associate Professor of Victorian Literature, Nanyang Technological University)Publisher: Oxford University Press Imprint: Oxford University Press Dimensions: Width: 16.40cm , Height: 24.00cm , Length: 2.50cm Weight: 0.642kg ISBN: 9780198858010ISBN 10: 0198858019 Pages: 320 Publication Date: 27 October 2020 Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Professional & Vocational , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: To order  Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us. Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: 'A very Moloch of a baby': Left to be Minded in Dickens 2: 'How I Managed': Victorian Infant Care Instructions 3: Competitive Infant Care in Domestic Fiction: Charlotte Yonge and the Unidealised Baby 4: Sensational Babies ConclusionReviewsWagner does a terrific job of engaging both with the popular culture of childrearing manuals and-sometimes less familiar-Victorian children's and sensation literature as well as the famous work of Charles Dickens, for instance, and her book is in this respect a real treasure-trove of sections on babies and infants drawn from this wide range of sources. * Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, Modern Language Review * In this masterful exploration of literary babies, Wagner exposes the many roles that babies have in Victorian writing ... Thoroughly researched and grounded in historical debates on infant care, this book offers a complex picture of infant characterization ... Wagner investigates the contradictory nature of idealized versus strictly commodified babies in ways that will resonate today. Scholars of the Victorian Age will appreciate this close examination of the youngest literary characters. * C. L. Bandish, CHOICE * In this masterful exploration of literary babies, Wagner exposes the many roles that babies have in Victorian writing ... Thoroughly researched and grounded in historical debates on infant care, this book offers a complex picture of infant characterization ... Wagner investigates the contradictory nature of idealized versus strictly commodified babies in ways that will resonate today. Scholars of the Victorian Age will appreciate this close examination of the youngest literary characters. * C. L. Bandish, CHOICE * Author InformationTamara S. Wagner is Associate Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she teaches Victorian literature. Her books include Victorian Narratives of Failed Emigration: Settlers, Returnees, and Nineteenth-Century Literature in English (2016), Financial Speculation in Victorian Fiction (2010), and Longing: Narratives of Nostalgia in the British Novel, 1740-1890 (2004). She has also edited collections on Domestic Fiction in Colonial Australia and New Zealand (2014), Victorian Settler Narratives (2011), and Antifeminism and the Victorian Novel: Rereading Nineteenth-Century Women Writers (2009). Professor Wagner currently works on Victorian babyhood. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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