Helena Ifill. Creating Character: Theories of Nature and Nurture in Victorian Sensation Fiction
Helena Ifill. Creating Character: Theories of Nature and Nurture in Victorian Sensation Fiction

Summary/Abstract: As signaled by its title, Creating Character: Theories of Nature and Nurture in Victorian Sensation Fiction, originally published in 2018, is deeply interested in the contradictions faced by Victorians intent on writing ‘character’ as a product of inheritance. Helena Ifill’s thorough investigation of sensation fiction by M. E. Braddon and Wilkie Collins asks us to consider instead how some authors of the period wrote alternative ‘fictions’ of character as negotiating so-called inheritance, alongside social forces or forms of ‘cultivation,’ such as education.

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