Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform

Author:   Kevin A. Morrison
Publisher:   Liverpool University Press
Volume:   76
ISBN:  

9781802076974


Pages:   264
Publication Date:   01 August 2022
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform


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Overview

In the 1880s and 1890s, Walter Besant was one of Britain’s most lionized living novelists. Like many popular writers of the period, Besant suffered from years of critical neglect. Yet his centrality to Victorian society and culture all but ensured a revival of interest. While literary critics are now rediscovering the more than forty works of fiction that he penned or co-wrote, as part of a more general revaluation of Victorian popular literature, legal scholars have argued that Besant, by advocating for copyright reform, played a crucial role in consolidating a notion of literary property as the exclusive possession of the individuated intellect. For their part, historians have recently shown how Besant – as a prominent philanthropist who campaigned for the cultural vitalization of impoverished areas in east and south London – galvanized late Victorian social reform activities. The expanding corpus of work on Besant, however, has largely kept the domains of authorship and activism, which he perceived as interrelated, conceptually distinct. Analysing the mutually constitutive interplay in Besant’s career between philanthropy and the professionalization of authorship, Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform highlights their fundamental interconnectedness in this Victorian intellectual polymath’s life and work.

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Author:   Kevin A. Morrison
Publisher:   Liverpool University Press
Imprint:   Liverpool University Press
Volume:   76
ISBN:  

9781802076974


ISBN 10:   1802076972
Pages:   264
Publication Date:   01 August 2022
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Walter Besant Now Kevin A. Morrison Part One: Literary Collaborations 2. Besant and Collaboration Kirsty Bunting 3. ‘Another like me’: The Literary Partnership of Walter Besant and James Rice Richard Storer 4. ‘I have altered nothing’: Walter Besant’s Completion of Blind Love Maria K. Bachman and Don Richard Cox Part Two: Reforming Authorship 5. Walter Besant and Copyright Reform Mary Ann Gillies 6. The Author Function in Walter Besant’s Fiction: the Notion of Artistic Value in the Wake of Copyright Law and the Nationalist Restructuring of the Trade Alberto Gabriele 7. Besant, Chatto and Watt: a Literary Income in the 1890s Simon Eliot  8. Workers as Artists: From Copyright to the Palace of Delight in Besant’s Writings Ayşe Çelikkol Part Three: Authoring Reforms 9. Altruism and The Monks of Thelema: Ideals and Realities Geoffrey A.C. Ginn 10. The Ethics of Perception and the Politics of Recognition: Walter Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions of Men Kevin Swafford 11. From Happy Individuals to Universal Sisterhood: Affective Reforms in All Sorts and Conditions of Men and Children of Gibeon Vicky Cheng and Haejoo Kim Part Four: Literary Relations 12. Moral Perfectionism, Optatives, and the Inky Line in Besant’s All in a Garden Fair and Gissing’s New Grub Street Tom Ue 13. Walter Besant: A Latter-Day Dickens? Andrzej Diniejko

Reviews

'This dedication to the complex network of ideas and lived practice makes Walter Besant more than a mere love letter to a forgotten Victorian. Rather, it provides an integral contribution to the history of publishing and of literary production, and to studies of libralism and reform as they appeared at the end of the century.' Peter Katz, Victorians Institute Journal ‘Kevin A. Morrison’s recent volume of essays, Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform, offers a timely and important meditation on the restoration of authors who have fallen out of favor or slipped into obscurity… The essays in this volume offer nuanced reflections on Besant’s marginal status, thoughtful speculations about his fall from popularity, and compelling arguments for bringing him back into the Victorian studies.’ Heidi Kaufman, Victorian Studies


'This dedication to the complex network of ideas and lived practice makes Walter Besant more than a mere love letter to a forgotten Victorian. Rather, it provides an integral contribution to the history of publishing and of literary production, and to studies of libralism and refom as they appeared at the end of the century.' Peter Katz, Victorians Institute Journal


Author Information

Kevin A. Morrison is Distinguished Professor in the School of Foreign Languages at Henan University.

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