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The final decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first witnessed a surge of published novels with direct and indirect connection to the Victorian era, at a time when a focus on the new millenium might have been expected. This proliferation of what came to be termed 'neo-Victorian novels' shows no sign of abating and has now given rise to scholarly research on the subject. The principal aim of this thesis is to examine the rise of the neo-Victorian novel during the period in question. After an introduction which situates the phenomenon within relevant theoretical and cultural contexts, the following chapter attempts to provide a sense of the thematic range of neo-Victorian novels through an original 'catalogue' of more than one hundred neo-Victorian novels, adopting the received neo-Victorian theoretical stance which believes that what neo-Victorian novels write about demonstrates contemporary concerns and contemporary attitudes to the Victorian as much as it attempts an accurate portrayal of a historical period. This is followed by three further chapters which focus on different structural forms in presenting 'Victorian' material: the pastiche, the split narrative and the re-write versions of the neo-Victorian novel. A core contention of the thesis is that the comparison of three different novel forms, allied to the examination of thematic areas of interest, exposes the contradictory impulse which lies at the heart of the neo-Victorian enterprise. While the continuing popularity of neo-Victorian fictions indicates a desire for a sense of continuing connection to Victorian forbears, imagined or actual, the insistence on plots which play to modern interests and sensibilities suggests that the Victorians have to 'fit' with us rather than the other way round. The various forms that the neo-Victorian novel adopts carry their own postmodern means of undermining the credibility of the Victorian world under construction.

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Catherine Clément, in <I>The Newly Born Woman</I>, regards 'magic, spectacle and illness' as the performance of the feminine. In studying the narratives of masquerading and miming women, these are the images which I locate: the magic of the sorceress, the spectacle of the transvestites or the illness of the hysteric. Within this thesis, I study instances of masquerade or mimicry, and their influence upon gender identity, in a selection of texts by nineteenth century women written for a particularly feminine audience: <I>Belinda</I> (1801) by Maria Edgeworth, <I>Lady Audley's Secret </I>(1861) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, <I>The Chase, Or, A Long Fatal Love Chase</I> (1866) by Louisa Alcott, <I>Through One Administration</I> (1883) and <I>The Secret Garden</I> (1913), both by Frances Hodgson Burnett. My approach is neither historical nor chronological. Moving away from historicising the masquerade, I mirror the fate of the masked occasion in history: its attenuation and sublimation inside the domestic. Rather than focusing on contextuality, I concentrate on textuality. The interiorised nature of that performance demands that my approach becomes theoretical, and in particular, psychoanalytic, given that both the masquerade and psychoanalysis deals with gender as construction and representation. By resisting chronology, I can express a reluctance to assume a progression towards a 'truth' or 'reality' and allow the masquerade to remain complex. Primarily I am interested in examining the 'theatrical' representation of the various female bodies written into the narratives. However, I am also concerned with textual masquerade/mime: whether the novels studied operate within a system of masquerade or mimicry and whether the discursive impulse is one of the capitulation or subversion. As I read femininity as performance, or as spectacle, constructed by a masculine audience, and represented by the feminine, I question the area 'behind-the-mask', and what lies there - indeed, whether it is possible to articulate it.

This essay is focused on Alfred Tennyson’s In Memoriam, interpreting the poem against the background of a Petrarchan tradition. In this text I show how Tennyson’s work exhibits several parallels to the traditional elements of Petrarchism, both in terms of the themes it explores and of itsmore formal aspects. Among these commonalities are such things as a persistent focus on a distant object of affection, a sense of conflict or tension between earthly and divine love and a overall chronology and progression which ties the sequence together into an almost narrative structure. Besides these similarities, I also explore how In Memoriam differs from its Petrarchan model, andhow its differences are born of the particular circumstances in which it was written. Thus I also show how Tennyson manages to adapt an older literary tradition to the needs of his own time.

One reason for the failure of Marxism to gain a large following in England, not explicitly covered by other writers, is the partial or complete rejection of Marxism by the founders of the modern British socialist movement. This study attempts to explain their reaction to Marxism and to evaluate their criticism. The influence of other thinkers on these men is analyzed when that influence appeared to be significant.

The emphasis of this thesis is to describe the Spasmodic poets of the Victorian period, to define "Spasmodism", to familiarize the reader with the major Spasmodics and their works, and to show the role that the Spasmodics filled during the Victorian period in English literature.

This study investigates the Foreign Architectural Book Society [F.A.B.S.] and its members from its foundation in 1859 through to the 1930s. Particular attention is given to the second generation of F.A.B.S. members, active between 1890 and 1920, who shared scholarly interests apparent in the architectural values they promoted in publications and their own buildings. In this period these F.A.B.S. members also occupied positions of power within the profession and influenced their contemporaries by encoding Beaux-Arts values in a reformed architectural education system. These developments are analysed using certain aspects of elite theory: this highlights the protectionist aspects of this education system and explains the survival into the 1930s of architectural values promoted by F.A.B.S. members. The F.A.B.S. was founded with the intention of internally circulating foreign architectural books and this study examines how the society operated. The functioning of the F.A.B.S. is analysed in relation to other societies its members joined, establishing their high social standing and a network of scholarly organisations through which architectural values were formed. An analysis of publications and buildings by the second generation of F.A.B.S. members reveals the fact that they promoted two architectural styles, Neo-Wrenaissance and Monumental Classicism. It is argued that Wren's influence was central to the formation of the values embodied in these styles. In the case of the Neo- Wrenaissance it is shown that this is a more appropriate term to describe works usually noted as examples of Neo-Georgian architecture. When examining Monumental Classicism it is noted that F.A.B.S. members used Beaux-Arts compositional devices, as encoded in architectural education, but promoted it as a national style by invoking the example of Wren. In conclusion it was argued that F.A.B.S. members encoded these stylistic values in the reformed architectural education system and this partially explains how the outmoded values of the Neo-Wrenaissance and Monumental Classicism managed to survive as valid stylistic options until the end of the 1930s.