English 150

Other Readings and Media

Required readings include novels by George Gissing and Wilkie Collins; short fiction of Thomas Hardy and Arthur Conan Doyle; poetry by Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning; and a Course Reader.

Description

"In this class we will explore the literature and culture surrounding Britain's poor, working classes, and racial outsiders in the Victorian era. Critical analysis of these marginalized classes and cultures will give us a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the diversified nature of Englishness in the nineteenth century.



We will read selections from some of the most famous social historians of the era--particularly Henry Mayhew and Charles Booth--as well as present-day analyses of nineteenth-century underclasses. We will spend a considerable amount of time on the culture of London's East End to begin our examination of connections between the geography of urban squalor, entrenched social problems of the London poor, and immigrant Others in England. "