5203 L $$aWilliam Hale White's posthumously published autobiographical memoir, The Early Life of Mark Rutherford (1913), is examined in terms of its origin, nature, and intent to provide a new perspective on the writer's life and beliefs. Through investigation of its setting and by analysis of the life described, White is re-framed within the wider historical and theological context.

This research project explores the rural-urban bind in four novels by Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). In each of these novels Hardy contrives to create an imagined nostalgia for a rural community losing its traditions, memory, and history due to social change brought about by the urban elements of modernisation, migration, and industrialisation. The purpose of this thesis is to expose the methods that Hardy employs to construct and conserve this rural-urban bind. Firstly, Hardy utilises the regional novel genre, which, as this essay shows, offers a felicitous framework for considering the problematic repercussions of the rural-urban bind, drawing attention to the importance of locality within the landscape. Secondly, Hardy draws on pastoral landscapes as a setting for representations of how social change, industrialisation and urbanisation affect characters, communities, environments and a nostalgic, rural way of life. Finally, this thesis explores Hardy's antagonistic portrayal of science, religion, industry, technology and travel to argue that the rural-urban bind is used negatively to convey encroaching modernity and portray a growing urban industrial landscape, which consumes rural traditions, erases memories and severs the individual's connection to place.

The Hegelian inheritance underwriting Walter Pater's aestheticism has long been acknowledged. According to this traditional criticism, there are two distinct readings of Hegel undertaken by Pater: an initial reaction against Hegel and a subsequent 'reconsideration' of his aestheticism. But what has been missed is a-third distinct reading, identifying a 'radical dualism' disrupting the foundations of the Hegelian dialectic.

This thesis asserts the importance of Dickensian comic modes. It engages with academic discourse and popular culture which between them have formulated a serious, socially engaged and psychologically dramatic Dickens in which comedy is muted. It examines the nature of Dickens's comedy and his debt to traditions of comic writing. It attempts to construct an understanding of Dickens in which comic modes are as vital as the dramatic to our understanding of Dickens's methods, themes and purposes. It adopts an inclusive approach to methodology in recognition of the wide-ranging nature of Dickensian comedy, deploying theorisations of the comic in the context of a Marxist approach to nineteenth-century modernity. It asserts the importance of the tradition of comic quixotic fiction in which Dickens can be seen to have written. It demonstrates that Dickens developed an individual response to the nature of emergent modernity that can be distinguished by contrast with other theorisations of the comic from the period. It examines distinctive Dickensian comic formulations of comic characterisation and the equally distinctive nature of Dickensian comic language and satire.

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Mary Elizabeth Braddon's popular novels surged into the literary marketplace following her bestseller Lady Audley's Secret (1862). One reason for this was the burgeoning availability of miscellany journals after the repeal of the 'taxes on knowledge'. Fresh avenues to the reading public were unlocked for aspiring authors, and Braddon's novels were offered increasingly prominent positions for serialisation. Contemporary critics' inflated responses reflect the cultural anxiety that this phenomenon evoked - Braddon's sensation fiction was charged as both cause and effect of a 'negative' development in reading practices. This thesis suggests an alternative view of Braddon's cultural significance. Braddon's novels scrutinised the fast-paced industrial society that impacted her readers' lives and value systems. She forged an affinity with readers through her engagement with subjects of popular interest. Her serialisation history rejects conventional nineteenth-century formulations of artistic value in which the literary hierarchy reflects the values of the social hegemony. Two of the most prominent journals that carried her fiction, Temple Bar and Belgravia, actively challenge this tenet. Yet they also reveal how the interdependence between serialised fiction and framing material could both aid, and hinder, an author's wider ambition. Braddon's serialisations demonstrate how her artistic and professional development responded to fluctuating evaluations of quality in art. Through them, we can trace the increasing significance of her readerships, not just as conveyers of commercial success, but also as the determiners of quality in popular fiction. As Braddon's reading public continued to develop, so too did the vehicles that carried her fiction. This resulted in a pioneering role in the emerging weekly newspaper syndicates that offered broad new readerships. Sensation in fiction became legitimate creative expression in the publications that carried Braddon's fiction to its diverse primary readerships. Her popular novels reflect these readers' desire to participate in an extensive range of social and political debates. Ultimately Braddon's artistic and professional progress responds to her readers' evolving cultural perceptions, representing the cause and effect of continuous ideological transformation in popular fiction.

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