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  1. Home
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  3. From Dickens to Dracula
  • Cited by 35
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2009
Print publication year:
2005
Online ISBN:
9780511484841
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511484841
Subjects:
Literature, English Literature 1830-1900
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (48)
Information

Book description

Ranging from the panoramic novels of Dickens to the horror of Dracula, Gail Turley Houston examines the ways in which the language and imagery of economics, commerce and banking are transformed in Victorian Gothic fiction, and traces literary and uncanny elements in economic writings of the period. Houston shows how banking crises were often linked with ghosts or inexplicable non-human forces and financial panic was figured through Gothic or supernatural means. In Little Dorrit and Villette characters are literally haunted by money, while the unnameable intimations of Dracula and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are represented alongside realist economic concerns. Houston pays particular attention to the term 'panic' as it moved between its double uses as a banking term and a defining emotion in sensational and Gothic fiction. This stimulating interdisciplinary book reveals that the worlds of Victorian economics and Gothic fiction, seemingly separate, actually complemented and enriched each other.

Reviews

"Houston's assessment of the connections between economic and literary discourse is a welcome addition to current work in this burgeoning area of research...the real strength of From Dickens to Dracula is that it provides a fresh perspective through its consideration of how financial panic is figured in nineteenth-century fiction, and is thus a valuable addition to scholarship in this field." Dickens Quarterly Gill Ballinger, University of the West England

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