Book contents
- Plagiarizing the Victorian Novel
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- Plagiarizing the Victorian Novel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue
- Chapter One The Pickwick Phenomenon
- Chapter Two Charles Dickens and the Pseudo-Dickens Industry
- Chapter Three Parody; or, The Art of Writing Edward Bulwer Lytton
- Chapter Four Thackeray versus Bulwer versus Bulwer: Parody and Appropriation
- Chapter Five Being George Eliot: Imitation, Imposture, and Identity
- Postscript, Posthumous Papers, Aftertexts
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Chapter Five - Being George Eliot: Imitation, Imposture, and Identity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2019
- Plagiarizing the Victorian Novel
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- Plagiarizing the Victorian Novel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue
- Chapter One The Pickwick Phenomenon
- Chapter Two Charles Dickens and the Pseudo-Dickens Industry
- Chapter Three Parody; or, The Art of Writing Edward Bulwer Lytton
- Chapter Four Thackeray versus Bulwer versus Bulwer: Parody and Appropriation
- Chapter Five Being George Eliot: Imitation, Imposture, and Identity
- Postscript, Posthumous Papers, Aftertexts
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Summary
George Eliot might seem an unlikely candidate to endure the imitative embrace of Victorian aftertexts: her work was popular but not populist like that of the eager, early Dickens, and her style was pronounced but not overwrought like that of the parody-provoking Edward Bulwer. In the estimation of John Holloway, Eliot was a sage, and she was also an oracle quoted in Alexander Main’s anthologies. A sage and an oracle might well escape the mercantile instincts of Reynolds and Prest and the satirical exercises of Fraser’s and Punch. Indeed, the kinds of aftertexts engendered by the successes (and failures) of Dickens and Bulwer seem, at first glance, to have neglected George Eliot.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Plagiarizing the Victorian NovelImitation, Parody, Aftertext, pp. 137 - 178Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019