Far from being just children's literature, Victorian fantasyis an art form that flourished in opposition to the repressive social and intellectual conditions of "Victorianism." In this fully revised and expanded edition, Stephen Prickett explores the way in which Victorian writers used nonrealistic techniques - nonsense, dreams, visions, and the creation of other worlds - to extend our understanding of this world. In particular, Prickett focuses on six writers (Lear, Carroll, Kingsley, MacDonald, Kipling, and Nesbit), tracing the development of their art form, their influence on each other, and how these writers used fantasy to question the ideology of Victorian culture and society.

At the height of his career, writing short stories provided Dickens with a release from the formal constraints of his novels and gave free reign to his creative imagination. Ranging from "flights of fancy" to literary masterpieces, Dickens's short stories contained artistic experiments that inspired fuller developments in his novels. Yet the short stories have been all but overlooked in critical discussions. Deborah A. Thomas focuses directly on this body of work, tracing three stages of development. In the early stage until 1840, Dickens produced numerous short stories, culminating in his experience with the abortive Master Humphrey's Clock. In the following ten years, he restricted his writing of short stories to the five Christmas Books but refined his theories about the value of the genre in the context of his work. In the third stage, 1850-1868, Dickens again turned actively to the writing of short stories, many of them the "Christmas Stories" appearing in the weeklies Household Words and All the Year Round, which Dickens edited successively from 1850 to 1869 and from 1859 until his death in 1870. The author concentrates primarily upon the more notable stories, drawing for a perspective upon Dickens' own concept of "fancy." In an increasingly factual age, Dickens—attracted to the unusual and the unknown—found the short story a form in which he could indulge his high degree of fantasy and explore the hidden corners of the mind. Dickens' fascination with psychological abnormality and the supernatural—reflected in his novels—reveals itself even more intriguingly in his short stories. In Thomas's analysis, Dickens' short stories appear as an important key to understanding the novels, while proving worthy in themselves of critical attention. Essential to a thorough study of Dickens, her book sheds light upon previously obscure facets of his developing artistry.

In Dickens and the Broken Scripture, Janet Larson examines the paradoxical role of the Bible in Dickens' novels, from such early works as Oliver Twist and Dombey and Son, in which the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer were drawn upon for the most part as stable sources of reassurance and order, to the far more complex novels of Dickens' maturity, such as Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Our Mutual Friend. In these later works, biblical allusion performs an increasingly contradictory and dissonant role that brings into question not only the moral character of Victorian society but also the sanctity of received religious traditions. Critics have tended to view Dickens' extensive use of the Bible as a not particularly complex or admirable aspect of his artistry--as a device he used primarily as a means of reassuring and building solidarity with his Victorian public. But as Larson demonstrates, Dickens' use of biblical allusion was as sophisticated and multifaceted as his use of character, narrative, description, and plot. In Dickens' novels, the Bible is a broken book, in need of revitalization and reinterpretation for his time, but also desperately vulnerable to attack from the tempestuous Victorian society of his day.

Edgar Allan Poe mastered a variety of literary forms over the course of his brief and turbulent career. As a storyteller, Poe defied convention by creating Gothic tales of mystery, horror and suspense that remain widely popular today. This collection demonstrates how Poe's experience of early nineteenth-century American life fueled his iconoclasm and shaped his literary legacy. Rather than provide critical explications of his writings, each essay explores one aspect of Poe's immediate environment, using pertinent writings - verse, fiction, reviews and essays - to suit. Examining his geographical, social and literary contexts, as well as those created by the publishing industry and advances in science and technology, the essays paint an unprecedented portrait of Poe's life and times. Written for a wide audience, the collection will offer scholars and students of American literature, historians and general readers new insight into Poe's rich and complex work.