All Outputs (10)

Neo-Victorianism, settler (post)colonialism and domesticity in Patrick White’s Voss (2019)
Journal Article

This article reads Patrick White’s 1957 novel Voss as an early example of Neo-Victorian fiction, a relatively recent but critically well-established category of postwar and contemporary fiction that has not yet been deployed with reference to Voss. I... Read More about Neo-Victorianism, settler (post)colonialism and domesticity in Patrick White’s Voss.

The naturalist in the Garden of Eden: Science and colonial landscape in Jem Poster's Rifling Paradise (2006) (2016)
Journal Article

This essay seeks to supplement an established critical tradition that reads natural history in neo-Victorian fiction from a postmodern and largely de-politicised perspective. I argue that the figure of the naturalist can be used to revisit natural hi... Read More about The naturalist in the Garden of Eden: Science and colonial landscape in Jem Poster's Rifling Paradise (2006).

Barry Unsworth's Morality Play: Narrative, detection, history (2016)
Journal Article

© 2016 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Morality Play is a historical detective novel set in the late fourteenth century and published in 1995, at a time of flourishing for historical fiction in Britain. This article argues that the novel shares some of the... Read More about Barry Unsworth's Morality Play: Narrative, detection, history.

A.S. Byatt (2013)
Book

A. S. Byatt is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed contemporary writers. This new study provides a lively and detailed exploration of her fiction and non-fiction, and examines Byatt's work in the light of postmodern concerns with languag... Read More about A.S. Byatt.

The contemporary British historical novel: representation, nation, empire (2009)
Book

This is the first full-length study of a genre that has had increasing critical attention and popular appeal at the turn of the twenty-first century. The book combines a contextual and theoretical framework for the success of historical fiction in Br... Read More about The contemporary British historical novel: representation, nation, empire.

Exploding taxonomies, exhibiting textuality: J.G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur (2009)
Book Chapter

The essay examines how collecting and textual accumulation provided the British Empire with a range of symbolic practices to extert indirect control over the colonised territory. The chapter centres on J.G. Farrell's satire of imperial ideology in hi... Read More about Exploding taxonomies, exhibiting textuality: J.G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur.

The story of colonial adventure (2008)
Book Chapter

The chapter examines the nature and scope of the colonial short story, with reference to authors such as Kipling, Conrad, Conan Doyle and Somerset Maugham. The Companion itself is a valuable resource for students and scholars in the field.

'Pedlars of their nation's past: Douglas Galbraith, James Robertson and the new historical novel' (2007)
Book Chapter

The essay examines two post-devolution Scottish historical novels and relates their subject matter and narrative strategies to the competing discourses of Scottishness from Walter Scott's Waverley to the devolution settlement.

History as gynealogy: A. s. byatt, tracy chevalier and ahdaf soueif (2004)
Journal Article

The article explores the use of the plot device of a female family line in three contemporary authors, relating it to the genre of the historical novel and postmodern narrative practices.

Biography, the postmodern last frontier: Banville, Barnes, Byatt and Unsworth (2001)
Journal Article

The article examines four novels by well-known contemporary authors, which share a biographer for protagonist. These texts are read in light of postmodern theories of narrative and history.