The essays collected here all take issue with the claim that the Victorian period is the antithesis of our own. They show how characteristic postmodern anxieties and celebrations concerning truth, certainty and identity informed Victorian culture at all levels. Covering everything from attitudes to drink to the poetry of Browning, from the Great Exhibition to the Elephant Man, this volume shows not only how the Victorians coped with these challenges but also what lessons they have for us today.

Presents new research and original theories on Victorian culture

Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction Past and Present: The Case of Samuel Smiles's Self Help ; Gary Day Imperial Muscular Christianity: Thomas Hughes' Biography of David Livingstone; Mary Angela Schwer Victorian Modernity? Writing the Great Exhibition; Chris Hopkins Black Silk and Red Paisley: the Toxic Woman in Wilkie Collins' Armadale ; Jessica Maynard A Postmodern Victorian: Lewis Carroll and the Critique of Totalising Reason; Simon Malpas Politics as Antagonism and Diversity: Mill and Lyotard; Peter R. Sedgwick Victorian Values and Silas Marner ; K.M. Newton Racism in the Mid-Victorian Novel: Thackeray's Philip ; John Peck The Reason for Drinking in Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge ; Steven Earnshaw 'To Whom Does He Address Himself?: Reading Wordsworth in Browning's Pauline ; Carl Plasa A Rose is a Rose is a Rover; Alistair Walker 'Haven't I Seen You Somewhere Before?' Melodrama, Postmodernism and Victorian Culture; Nadine Holdsworth 'A Low Borne Labourer Like You':Audience and Victorian Working-Class Melodrama; Darryl Wadsworth Victorian Values and Fast Young Ladies: From Madeleine Smith to Ruth Rendall; Nick Rance Vampires and Victorians: Count Dracula and the Return of the Repressive Hypothesis; Robert Mighall Of Elephants and Men: The Freak as Victorian and Contemporary Spectacle; Jonathan Skinner Index