Drawing on novels, poetry, periodicals, and political pamphlets, Giving Women examines the literary expression and cultural consequences of gift exchange among English women from the 1820s until the end of the First World War.

Catholic Sensationalism and Victorian Literature offers a highly original examination of Victorian sensationalism through the exploration of popular literary representations of Roman Catholicism, that exotic, corrupt religious Other which is inscribed as the implacable anti-English enemy. The book demonstrates how new understandings of cultural tensions of the period are gained through the association of Roman Catholicism with secular fears of crime, sex and violence, rather than with theological ‘excesses’ and doctrinal ‘superstitions’.