Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

1832 / Lawrence Poston -- 1848 / Anthony H. Harrison -- 1870 / Linda K. Hughes -- 1897 / Stephen Arata -- Growing up : childhood / Claudia Nelson -- Moving out : adolescence / Chris R. Vanden Bossche -- Growing old : age / Teresa Mangum -- Passing on : death / Gerhard Joseph and Herbert F. Tucker -- Victorian sexualities / James Eli Adams -- Clerical / Christine L. Krueger -- Legal / Simon Petch -- Medical / Lawrence Rothfield -- Military / John R. Reed -- Educational / Thomas William Heyck -- Administrative / Robert Newsom -- Financial / Christina Crosby -- Industrial / Herbert Sussman -- Commercial / Jennifer Wicke -- Spectacle / Joss Marsh -- Publishing / Richard D. Altick -- Poetry / E. Warwick Slinn -- Fiction / Hilary Schor -- Drama / Alan Fischler -- Life writing / Timothy Peltason -- Sage writing / Linda H. Peterson -- Literary criticism / David E. Latané, Jr. -- Under Victorian skins : the bodies beneath / Helena Michie -- On the parapets of privacy / Karen Chase and Michael Levenson -- "Then on the shore of the wide world" : the Victorian nation and its others / James Buzard.

"Thirty leading Victorianists from around the world collaborate here in a multidimensional analysis of the breadth and sweep of modern Britain's longest, unruliest literary epoch." "Its topical spectrum, precision of focus, and accessible style keep the book available for ready consultation, while an index and network of cross-references encourage further study. At the same time, when read sequentially the book renders a textured and polyphonic image, by diverse hands exemplifying diverse standpoints, of the Victorian imagination: a manifold cultural force that notoriously eludes near summary, yet bequeathed to our own day a recognizable tradition with which we are destined to struggle - as scholars, as modern people - for some time to come."--BOOK JACKET.