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Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

This course examines central texts in the development of the 19th-Century English novel: Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, M.E. Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and one Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" stories. Novels will be considered in their cultural and historical contexts—with particular attention focused on industrialism and the novel on the representation of women and to the place of women writers in the 19th-Century novel “tradition.”  The course will consider various sub-genres of 19th-Century novels: the crime novel, the sensation novel (the Victorian “pot-boiler”), the novel of female development, the psychological thriller.

Attendance and participation is expected at all class sessions (no more than three unexcused absences).  Students will be evaluated on the basis of: 1) four 2-3 page exercises (40% of grade) and two 5-7 page essays (50% of grade) 2) a final exam (10% of grade; optional if students attend voluntary weekly discussion sessions)