Why Victorian Literature Still Matters is a passionate defense of Victorian literatures enduring impact and importance for readers interested in the relationship between literature and life, reading and thinking.Explores the prominence of Victorian literature for contemporary readers and academics, through the authors unique insight into why it is still important todayProvides new frames of interpretation for key Victorian works of literature and close readings of important textsArgues for a new engagement with Victorian literature, from general readers and scholars alikeSeeks to remove Victorian literature from an entrenched set of values, traditions and perspectives - demonstrating how vital and resonant it is for modern literary and cultural analysis

Philip Davis is Professor of English Literature in the School of English, University of Liverpool, UK. He is the author ofThe Victorians and, most recently,Bernard Malamud: A Writer's Life. His other books includeThe Experience of Reading; Real Voices: On Reading, andMemory and Writing: from Wordsworth to Lawrence, as well as works on Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson. He is also editor ofThe Reader, a non-academic literary magazine aimed at the serious reader.

Introduction: The Victorian Bump and Where to Find It 1

1 Victorian Hard Wiring 9

2 Isaiah and Ezekiel But What About Charley? 35

3 Not So Straightforward: Realist Prose and What It Hides Within Itself 54

4 A Literature In Time 81

5 Individual Agents 112

6 A Few of My Favorite Things: A Glove, a Sandal, and Plaited Hair 138

Notes 161

Index 168