Scott, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy: Great Shakespeareans: Volume V

Description

The subjects of this volume are the four nineteenth-century English writers who have been most enduringly hailed as Shakespearean. Shakespeare's plays extend in time and space beyond the ignorant present. They are made of up stories that ask for more telling, especially about their women characters, and this ambition may be realized in a medium less sharply bounded than the theatre. Sir Walter Scott was the first novelist to be acclaimed as a modern Shakespeare; Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy are the successors who have most frequently prompted comparison of the novel's capabilities with Shakespearean drama.

Adrian Poole is Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge, UK and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. His books include Tragedy: A Very Short Introduction (2005) and Shakespeare and the Victorians (2003). Contributors: Peter Holbrook (University of Queensland, Australia), Adrian Poole (University of Cambridge, UK), John Rignall (University of Warwick), Rebekah Scott (University of Nottingham, UK) and Nicola J. Watson (Open University, UK).

Reviewed in Cambridge Quarterly, vol 40, no 4. As in Shakespeare, readers can appreciate the ironies offered up by more than one point of view...The general editors Peter Holland and Poole state that the purpose of the series should not be merely to demonstrate Shakespeare's vast following, but also to show how those followers helped us understand Shakespeare. I certainly agree that the latter is worth undertaking. -- Alexander Welsh, Yale University * Victorian Studies/Vol. 5, No. 22 *