Gambling In The Nineteenth Century English Novel

This book explores the theme of gambling in a wide range of nineteenth-century English novels. It examines the representation of gambling in the novels themselves and the role that gambling played in the lives of the individual novelists. It also considers the significance of gambling in the novels within the wider context of the development of Victorian society. Following an historical overview, the book comprises individual chapters on: Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope and George Moore. Gambling in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel not only provides fresh readings of established texts within a distinctive social and cultural context, but it is also a comprehensive barometer of the social history of the time as attitudes towards leisure changed. It is essential reading for all those interested in the development of English society and culture in the Victorian era. Gambling occurred in all strata of society and was a national pastime. The pursuit of gambling took many forms: from after-dinner cards to pugilism, and indeed Stock Exchange transactions were considered by many to be gambling at its worst. Then a shift took place in the perception of gambling, primarily as a result of economic encounters relating to the Industrial Revolution. Representations of gambling in novels of the period place the industrious middle class against both the wasteful rich and the idle poor.

This text explores the theme of gambling in a range of 19th-century English novels. It examines the representation of gambling in the novels, the role that gambling played in the lives of the novelists, and gambling in the novels within the context of the development of Victorian society.

Iinvestigates some of the ways in which Laplacian and, indeed, Newtonian models of observation and the universe are at once assimilated and complicated by Romantic and Victorian writers such as Carlyle, Burke, Abbott, Poe and Wordsworth. This book explains how some of these literary reimaginings look forward to more modern conceptions of science.

Daniel Williams shows how, in a profoundly numerical age, Victorian novels imagined thought and action in the face of uncertainty.

Vice and the Victorians explores the ways the Victorian world gave meanings to the word 'vice', and the role this complex notion played in shaping society. Mike Huggins provides a richer and more nuanced understanding of a term that, despite its vital importance to the Victorians, has thus far lacked a clear definition. Each chapter explores a different facet of vice. Firstly, the book seeks to define exactly what vice meant to the Victorians, exploring how the language of vice was used as a tool to beat down opposition and dissent. It considers the cultural geography and spatial dimensions of vice in the public and private spheres, before moving on to look at specific vices: the unholy trinity of drink, sex and gambling. Finally, it shifts from vice to virtue and the efforts of moral reformers, and reassesses the relationship between vice and respectability in Victorian life. In his lively and engaging discussion, Mike Huggins draws on a range of theory and exploits a wide variety of texts and representations from the periodical press, parliamentary reports and Acts, novels, obscene publications, paintings and posters, newspapers, sermons, pamphlets and investigative works. This will be an illuminating text for undergraduates studying Victorian Britain as well as anyone wishing to gain a more nuanced understanding of Victorian society.

In 1836 Benjamin Drake, a midwestern writer of popular sketches for newspapers of the day, introduced his readers to a new and distinctly American rascal who rode the steamboats up and down the Mississippi and other western waterways -- the riverboat gambler. These men, he recorded, "dress with taste and elegance; carry gold chronometers in their pockets; and swear with the most genteel precision.... Every where throughout the valley, these mistletoe gentry are called by the original, if not altogether classic, cognomen of 'Black-legs.'" In Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men, Thomas Ruys Smith collects nineteenth-century stories, sketches, and book excerpts by a gallery of authors to create a comprehensive collection of writings about the riverboat gambler. Long an iconic figure in American myth and popular culture but, strangely, one that has never until now received a book-length treatment, the Mississippi River gambler was a favorite character throughout the nineteenth century -- one often rich with moral ambiguities that remain unresolved to this day. In the absorbing fictional and nonfictional accounts of high stakes and sudden reversals of fortune found in the pages of Smith's book, the voices of canonized writers such as William Dean Howells, Herman Melville, and, of course, Mark Twain hold prominent positions. But they mingle seamlessly with lesser-known pieces such as an excerpt from Edward Willett's sensationalistic dime novel Flush Fred's Full Hand, raucous sketches by anonymous Old Southwestern humorists from the Spirit of the Times, and colorful accounts by now nearly forgotten authors such as Daniel R. Hundley and George W. Featherstonhaugh. Smith puts the twenty-eight selections in perspective with an Introduction that thoroughly explores the history and myth surrounding this endlessly fascinating American cultural icon. While the riverboat gambler may no longer ply his trade along the Mississippi, Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men makes clear the ways in which he still operates quite successfully in the American imagination.

Part I of this authoritative handbook offers systematic essays, which deal with major historical, social, philosophical, political, cultural and aesthetic contexts of the English novel between 1830 and 1900. The essays offer a wide scope of aspects such as the Industrial Revolution, religion and secularisation, science, technology, medicine, evolution or the increasing mediatisation of the lifeworld. Part II, then, leads through the work of more than 25 eminent Victorian novelists. Each of these chapters provides both historical and biographical contextualisation, overview, close reading and analysis. They also encourage further research as they look upon the work of the respective authors at issue from the perspectives of cultural and literary theory.