This book studies changes in the practice of literary criticism in nineteenth-century Britain and locates those changes within wider movements in intellectual culture. The growth of knowledge and its subsequent institutionalization in universities produced new forms of intellectual authority. Small examines these processes in a wide variety of disciplines, including economics, historiography, sociology, psychology, and philosophical aesthetics, and explores their impact upon literary criticism.

Conditions for Criticism: Authority, Knowledge, and Literature in the Late Nineteenth Century

Literature & Fiction

Small, Ian

British & Irish

Clarendon Press

A materialist account of Wilde's writing career, based on publishing contracts and other documentation as well as detailed evidence of how he composed, this book argues that Wilde was not driven by an oppositional politics, nor was he an aesthetic "purist." Rather, he was thoroughly immersed in the contemporary "commodification of culture" in which books became product. This study surveys his writing practices across the whole of the oeuvre, and radically reinterprets the significance of his revision and "plagiarism."

Oscar Wilde's Profession: Writing and the Culture Industry in the Late Nineteenth Century

Guy, Josephine M.

Dramas & Plays

Oxford University Press

Nineteenth-century Britain saw the rise of secularism, the development of a modern capitalist economy, multi-party democracy, and an explosive growth in technological, scientific and medical knowledge. It also witnessed the emergence of a mass literary culture which changed permanently the relationships between writers, readers and publishers.Focusing on the work of British and Irish authors, The Routledge Concise History of Nineteenth-Century Literature:  considers changes in literary forms, styles and genres, as well as in critical discourses examines literary movements such as Romanticism, Pre-Raphaelitism, Aestheticism and Decadence considers the work of a wide range of canonical and non-canonical writers discusses the impact of gender studies, queer theory, postcolonialism and book history contains useful, student-friendly features such as explanatory text boxes, chapter summaries, a detailed glossary and suggestions for further reading. In their lucid and accessible manner, Josephine M. Guy and Ian Small provide readers with an understanding of the complexity and variety of nineteenth-century literary culture, as well as the historical conditions which produced it.

The Routledge Concise History of Nineteenth-Century Literature (Routledge Concise Histories of Literature)

Guy, Josephine

Routledge

Nineteenth-century Britain saw the rise of secularism, the development of a modern capitalist economy, multi-party democracy, and an explosive growth in technological, scientific and medical knowledge. It also witnessed the emergence of a mass literary culture which changed permanently the relationships between writers, readers and publishers. Focusing on the work of British and Irish authors, The Routledge Concise History of Nineteenth-Century Literature: <ul>
<li>considers changes in literary forms, styles and genres, as well as in critical discourses</li> <li>examines literary movements such as Romanticism, Pre-Raphaelitism, Aestheticism and Decadence</li> <li>considers the work of a wide range of canonical and non-canonical writers</li> <li>discusses the impact of gender studies, queer theory, postcolonialism and book history</li> <li>contains useful, student-friendly features such as explanatory text boxes, chapter summaries, a detailed glossary and suggestions for further reading.</li>
</ul>
In their lucid and accessible manner, Josephine M. Guy and Ian Small provide readers with an understanding of the complexity and variety of nineteenth-century literary culture, as well as the historical conditions which produced it.

In this important new book, Guy and Small develop a new account of literary creativity in the late nineteenth century, one that combines concepts generated by text-theorists concerning the embodied nature of textuality with the empirical insights of text-editors and book historians. Through these developments, which the authors term the ‘textual turn,’ this study examines the textual condition of nineteenth-century literature. The authors explore works by Dickens, Wilde, Hardy, Yeats, Swinburne, FitzGerald, Pater, Arnold, Pinero and Shaw, connecting questions about what a work textually ‘is’ with questions about why we read it and how we value it. The study asks whether the textual turn places us in a stronger position to analyze the value of a nineteenth-century text―not for readers of the nineteenth century, but of the twenty-first. The authors argue that this issue of value is central to their discipline.

The Textual Condition of Nineteenth-Century Literature (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature)

The current debate about the nature of English studies has questioned the status of English as a discipline. Josephine Guy and Ian Small set this so-called "crisis in English" within the larger context of disciplinary knowledge. They examine the teaching of English and literary studies in the United States and Britain, and argue that the attempt by some radical critics to politicize the discipline has profound consequences for the nature of English studies. In the process they demystify issues and arguments that have often been obscured by jargon and polemic.

Politics and Value in English Studies: A Discipline in Crisis?

Cambridge University Press

The Kurrajongs: A Work of Fact and Fiction

Self-published

By the end of the nineteenth century, the robust virtues of the Victorian age began to be undermined by the first stirrings of the Aesthetic movement, best represented by the writings of Wilde and the paintings of Whistler. In this anthology of the Aesthetes, Ian Small makes available in one volume the major documents of the movement and the principal critical reactions to it. The first part contains the main critical polemic associated with the Aesthetic movement, works by Swinburne, Pater, Whistler and Wilde. The second part is a selection of poetry and fiction representative of the Aesthetes, and the third part reprints some of the move important critical reactions to the movement, from Mallock and W.S. Gilbert to F.H. Myers and Max Beerbohm.This collection of documents provides an indispensable basis for any study of the Aesthetes and resurrects much fascinating material that is otherwise unavailable.

The Aesthetes: A sourcebook

ROUTLEDGE @

Oscar Wilde Revalued: An Essay on New Materials & Methods of Research (British Authors Series, 1880-1920)

History & Criticism

Elt Pr

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Books by Small, Ian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Small, Ian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Conditions for Criticism: Authority, Knowledge, and Literature in the Late Nineteenth Century

Oscar Wilde's Profession: Writing and the Culture Industry in the Late Nineteenth Century

The Routledge Concise History of Nineteenth-Century Literature (Routledge Concise Histories of Literature)

The Routledge Concise History of Nineteenth-Century Literature (Routledge Concise Histories of Literature)

The Textual Condition of Nineteenth-Century Literature (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature)

Politics and Value in English Studies: A Discipline in Crisis?

Politics and Value in English Studies: A Discipline in Crisis?

The Kurrajongs: A Work of Fact and Fiction

The Aesthetes: A sourcebook

Oscar Wilde Revalued: An Essay on New Materials & Methods of Research (British Authors Series, 1880-1920)