Abstract
This essay argues for greater inclusion of Victorian short fiction in university teaching. In the first part of the essay I argue that Victorian short fiction has been subject to a double marginalisation in scholarship. This has resulted, firstly, from the minor status of short fiction in general, and secondly, from the focus of attempts to redeem the short story upon proto-modernist stories. This leaves underexplored the greater part of short fiction from the nineteenth century – particularly highly plotted popular fictions, and fictions published before the 1890s. Part two contends that this scholarly neglect is reflected in an insufficiency of pedagogic scholarship on Victorian short fiction. It argues for the teaching potential of this material in terms of moving beyond the canon, enabling students to become producers of knowledge, and decolonising the curriculum. Part three provides a case study of a digital platform – the Victorian Short Fiction Project – and an 1862 tale collected there from London Society magazine which focuses upon female art students negotiating possibly conflicting desires for autonomy, professional fulfilment, and marriage. The analysis aims to show that even ephemeral, anonymous short fiction of this kind can open up valuable classroom discussions of narrative form, readerly engagement, and the complex ideological work being undertaken by popular Victorian fictions.
Highlights
Rediscovering the Popular Victorian Short StoryThe short story is the product of today
As has been well documented, when short stories began to flourish from the middle part of the nineteenth century, and burgeoned in the latter two decades, it was in response to the exponential growth in periodical publishing that had been driven by technical revolutions in printing processes and the manufacture of paper, repeal of trade duties, changes in copyright law and growing rates of literacy
I take it that these essays together prompt us to ask: what can account for the wide dissemination and consumption of these short fictions and others like them? What made them popular with Victorian readers, and writers? What effects resulted from attempts to compress novelistic plots for a smaller canvas? What roles might short fiction have played in contributing to the development of popular genres in the nineteenth century? And in what ways might Victorian short stories still speak to us, still offer us forms of pleasure, identification, or critical engagement, in the twenty-first century? It is to this latter question, in the context of the higher education classroom, that I will turn
Summary
The short story is the product of today. This is the age of condensation. Hanson had hardly originated this distinction, for as will already be clear from Marsh’s satirical account, it had already developed in the late nineteenth century She declared her own preference to be with the plotless variety, and other critics agreed, seeing this as the form in which the distinctive aesthetic and narrative possibilities of short fiction could truly be realised. Juvenile and working-class readers – remains difficult to access as fragile material in physical archives or obtainable only directly from collectors.7 In this introductory essay, I shall make an argument for more fully integrating the Victorian short story into not just our scholarship, and our classrooms: for including more Victorian short fiction in university modules and for making use of precisely those online resources that can help students understand how texts would have been received and made sense of by contemporary readers. Through a discussion of “My First Picture: A Tale” by the anonymous R.M. in the inaugural volume of James Hogg’s London Society magazine in 1862, I will try to show how a piece of ephemera such as this could be opened up for consideration by students in terms of the contemporary debates it connects with and the pleasures and identifications it would have offered to its mid-Victorian readers – as well the ways in which it might or might not allow twenty-first-century readers to relate to it
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