Transport in British Fiction Technologies of Movement, 1840-1940

by Gavin, Adrienne E.; Humphries, Andrew F.

• ISBN13: 9781137499035
• ISBN10: 1137499036
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-06-22
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Transport in British Fiction: Technologies of Movement, 1840—1940 is the first essay collection devoted to transport and its various types  - horse, train, tram, cab, omnibus, bicycle, ship, car, air and space  - in British fiction. Gathering international expertise, its 14 original essays explore the ways in which the social, historical, and cultural impacts of transport integrate with the concerns of fiction across a century marked by both unprecedented technological change and the entrenchment of the novel as the dominant literary form. Analysing textual synthesis of technological advances with rapidly shifting cultural perspectives, the volume explores fiction's fascination with transport's symbolism and its impact upon character, relationships, and society. Exploring transport in contexts including gender, class, sexuality, colonialism, war, urbanism, modernity, travel, crime, and science fiction, the volume offers innovative perspectives on the fictional portrayal of new transport technologies that were as democratizing and progressive as they were threatening and destabilizing.

Author Biography

Adrienne E Gavin is Emeritus Professor of English Literature and co-founder of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers (ICVWW). An award-winning author and editor, she has written, edited, or co-edited 13 books including Dark Horse: A Life of Anna Sewell, Childhood in Edwardian Fiction, The Child in British Literature, and Writing Women of the Fin de Siècle.

Andrew F Humphries is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Education at Canterbury Christ Church University where he teaches and supervises undergraduates and postgraduates on a range of courses. In addition to publishing on D. H. Lawrence, H. G. Wells, E. M. Forster, and Robert Cormier, he is an award-winning editor with Adrienne Gavin of the book Childhood in Edwardian Fiction (2009).

Table of Contents

Notes on the Contributors
The Transports of Fiction 1840-1940: An Introduction; Adrienne E. Gavin and Andrew F. Humphries
PART I: TRANSPORT IN EARLY AND MID-VICTORIAN FICTION, 1840-1880
1.Distance is Abolished: The Democratization and Erasure of Travel in William Makepeace Thackeray's Barry Lyndon; Elizabeth Bleicher
2.'A Perambulating Mass of Woollen Goods': Bodies in Transit in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Railway Journey; Charlotte Mathieson
3.Death by Train: Spectral Technology and Dickens's Mugby Junction; Jen Cadwallader
4.Children On Board: Transoceanic Crossings in Victorian Literature; Tamara S. Wagner
5.The Living Transport Machine: George Eliot's Middlemarch; Margaret Linley
6.'I saw a great deal of trouble amongst the horses in London': Anna Sewell's Black Beauty and the Victorian Cab Horse; Adrienne E. Gavin
PART II: TRANSPORT IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE AND EDWARDIAN LITERATURE, 1880-1910
7.The 'Freedom Machine': The New Woman and the Bicycle; Lena Wånggren
8.'Buses should...inspire writers': Omnibuses in fin-de-siècle Short Stories and Journalism; Lorna Shelley
9.Transport, Technology, and Trust: The 'Sustaining Illusion' in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Nostromo; Courtney Salvey
10.'Into the interstices of time': Speed and Perception in the Scientific Romance; Paul March Russell
PART III: TRANSPORT IN MODERN FICTION, 1910-1940
11.Train(ing) Modernism: Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and the Moving Locations of Queerness; Benjamin Bateman
12.'This frightful war': Trains as Settings of Disturbance and Dislocation in the First World War Fiction of D. H. Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield; Andrew F. Humphries
13.From Tram to Black Maria: Transport in A Pin to See the Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse; Janet Stobbs Wright
14.Driving Through a Changing Landscape: Car Travel in Inter-War Fiction; Peter Lowe
Bibliography
Index