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What did it mean, in the rapidly changing world of Victorian England, to ´be a man´? In essays written specially for this volume, nine distinguished scholars from Britain and the USA show how Victorian novelists from the Bront‰s to Conrad sought to discover what made men, what broke them, and what restored them.

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Preface Notes on the contributors 1. Masculinity, Power and Play in the Work of the Bront‰s; Sara Lodge 2. Working-Class Masculinity and the Victorian Novel; Chris Louttit 3. Dickens and Masculinity: the Necessity of the Nurturing Male; Natalie McKnight 4. Tomboys and Girly Boys in George Eliot´s Early Fiction; Shelley Trower 5. Manful Assertions: Affect, Domesticity and Class Status Anxiety in East Lynne and Aurora Floyd; Richard Nemesvari 6. Growing up to be a man: Thomas Hardy and Masculinity; Jane Thomas 7. Masculinity, Imperialism and the Novel; Phillip Mallett 8. Aestheticism, Resistance and the Realist Novel: Marius and Masculinity; Emma Sutton 9. Conrad´s Theatre of Masculinities; Linda M. Shires Index

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"The goal of the collection is to present the ´matrix of culturally and historically specific masculinities´ available to scholars of the Victorian novel, with Victorian fiction as the ideal ground for ´exploring, questioning, and reinforcing values and beliefs´ related to masculinities. ... the essays suggest several important points about the future of Victorian masculinity studies. ... It is a valuable resource for researchers seeking a clear and lively introduction to the most celebrated novelists of the era." (Melissa Shields Jenkins, English Literature in Transition, Vol. 59 (2), April, 2016)

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Sara Lodge, University of St Andrews, UK Chris Louttit, Radboud University, Netherlands Natalie McKnight, Boston University, USA Shelley Trower, University of Roehampton, UK Richard Nemesvari, St Francis Xavier University, Canada Jane Thomas, University of Hull, UK Phillip Mallett, University of St Andrews, UK Emma Sutton, University of St Andrews, UK Linda M. Shires, Yeshiva University, USA

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