Notes 1. INTRODUCTION 1. The texts of these letters are reproduced in Dear Stevenson: Letters from Andrew Lang to Robert Louis Stevenson with Five Letters from Stevenson to Lang, edited by Marysa DeMoor (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1990). 2. John Maynard, 'Broad Canvas, Narrow Perspective', in The Worlds of Victorian Fiction, edited by Jerome H. Buckley (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975; Harvard English Studies 6), p. 238. 2. THE SCOTT LEGACY 1. Ian Jack, English Literature 1815-1832 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.) 2. Allan Massie, 'Scott and the European Novel,' in Sir Walter Scott: The Long-Forgotten Melody, ed. Alan Bold (London: Vision Press, and Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1983), p. 94. 3. Ibid., pp. 94-97. Massie reminds us that the French historian Augustin Thierry was not alone when he called Ivanhoe Scott's masterpiece, and added, 'Unless, I say, one can understand the feelings which these [medieval] novels and poems aroused, on cannot begin to measure or evaluate Scott or his influence.' 4. Nicholas Rance, The Historical Novel and Popular Politics in Nineteenth­ Century England (London: Vision Press, 1975), pp. 25-26. Rance thus characterizes the way in which the Victorians interpreted the history of some five centuries earlier: 'The Middle Ages in fiction were either absolutely remote from contemporary life, in the sense that modern­ ised heroes and heroines breathed a romantic 'period' atmosphere, or else, more cunningly, the concept of the enduring English-Saxon character, resistant to Norman and Stuart tyranny, endowed readers with the spirit of the free Saxons.' Carlyle and Froude recognized the fact of change, but did not understand the mechanisms of evolution that created Victorian society. Rance adds that 'the medieval period was still the most neglected by accredited historians of the English past when Stubbs began publishing his Constitutional History in 1874' (p. 26). 5. Quarterly Review, Vol. XIV (October 1815), p. 188. 3. THE EMPHASIS ON HISTORY IN THE HISTORICAL NOVEL 1. Preface, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Volker von 1494 bis 1514 (1824). 164 Notes 165 2. These were published in The Monthly Chronicle (March 1838), pp. 42-50, and (April1838), pp. 138--149. 3. 'On Certain Principles of Art in Works of Imagination', Caxtoniana, The Knebworth Edition of the Works of the Right Hon. Lord Lytton (London: George Routledge, 1875), p. 324. 4. Rienzi I The Last of the Roman Tribunes, Knebworth Edition, p. vii. 5. Ibid., p. viii. 6. Ibid., p. 11. 7. Dorothy L. Sayers, Wilkie Collins I A Critical and Biographical Study, ed. E. R. Gregory (Toledo: Friends of the University of Toledo Libraries, 1977), p. 55. 8. Kenneth Robinson, Wilkie Collins I A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 54. 9. Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade I First Editions (with a few exceptions) in the Library at Dormy House, Pine Valley, New Jersey, described with Notes, ed. M. L. Parrish and Elizabeth V. Miller (London: Constable, 1940), p. 10. 10. Wilkie's Preface speaks of massing 'effects', and balancing and dis­ criminating 'lights and shadows', by varying the lengths of chapters, and contrasting different passages. William Collins, a famous painter, was undoubtedly influential in the way this sentence is worded. In addition, Wilkie Collins contributed a landscape to the Academy exhi­ bition of 1849, and hung it afterwards in his study. (Sayers, pp. 70-72.) 11. These quotations were recorded in Lewes's hand. The George Eliot Let­ ters, ed. Gordon S. Haight (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), Vol. III, p. 414. The Letters (particularly Volumes II-IV) contains numerous expressions of George Eliot's unhappiness with the progress of Romola, which was far more intense than she suffered dur­ ing the writing of any other novel. See also George Eliot I A Writer's Notebook 1854-1879/And Uncollected Writings, edited by Joseph Wiesenfarth (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1981), for Journal entries and a brisk summation of the available evidence testifying to the malaise. It is no surprise that Eliot regarded Romola as a turning-point in her career. My reading emphasizes the conflict in Eliot's mind between the competing claims of historical reconstruction and fictional invention, but alternative interpretations, concentrating on elements in Eliot's life that needed to be worked out, however painfully, in fictional form, are available to an interested reader. See, for example, Dianne F. Sadoff's Monsters of Affection: Dickens, Eliot and Bronte on Fatherhood (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 88--99, for a discussion that stresses trauma, memory, and repression. 12. Ibid., p. 430. 13. Ibid., p. 435. 14. Ibid., p. 457. 15. Ibid., p. 474. 16. Ibid., p. 473--474. 17. Quoted in George Eliot I The Critical Heritage, ed. David Carroll (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1971), pp. 195-196. 166 Notes 18. Quoted by F. B. Pinion, A George Eliot Companion I Literary Achievement and Modern Significance (London: Macmillan, 1981), p. 142. 19. John W. Cross, George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals, 3 vols. (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood, n.d. [1885]), Vol. 2, p. 255. The judgement of later generations of critics has been, on the whole, more severe than that of the early reviewers of Romola. See Dwight N. Lindley's 'Clio and Three Historical Novels', Dickens Studies Annual I Essays on Victorian Fiction I Volume 10, edited by Michael Timko, Fred Kaplan, and Edward Guiliano (New York: AMS Press, 1982), p. 79, for a typical evaluation: 'Surely this passion for accuracy- for recovery of a myriad of facts- was one of the causes for the agony she felt as she struggled to write the novel. No wonder she often conveyed the impression that she was not so much a novelist but an historian like Casaubon, carrying a dimly shining torch into a labyrinth, particularly in sections of the novel when she is attempting to convey a sense of place through detail, as in the scenes describing Tito Melema's arrival in Florence (Book I, Chapters I-IV).' 20. See Walter F. Wright's The Shaping of The Dynasts I A Study in Thomas Hardy (University of Nebraska Press, 1967) for a careful analysis of Hardy's indebtedness to the records of the past; a briefer treatment may be found in R. J. White's Thomas Hardy and History (London: Macmillan, 1974). 21. Harold Ore!, Thomas Hardy's Epic-Drama: A Study of The Dynasts (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1963). 22. Kenneth Millard, Edwardian Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 59--60. 23. Ibid., p. 63. 4. DIDACTIC ELEMENTS IN THE HISTORICAL NOVEL 1. [Mrs] E. C. Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, 3rd edn (London: Smith, Elder, 1857), Vol. II, p. 114. 2. Herbert Rosengarten and Margaret Smiths, eds, Introduction to Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. xvi-xvii. 3. Mrs Gaskell, p. 114. 4. Mrs Gaskell, p. 120. 5. See, for example, Robert Keefe's Charlotte Bronte's World of Death (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), Ch. 5, pp.13CH48; Carol Bock's Charlotte Bronte and the Storyteller's Audience (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992), Ch. 4, pp. 109-126; Janet Gezari's Charlotte Bronte and Defensive Conduct I The Author and the Body at Risk (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), Ch. 4, pp. 90-124; Lawrence Jay Dessner's The Homely Web of Truth: A Study of Charlotte Bronte's Novels (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), Ch. 6, pp. 82-97. These are repre­ sentative assessments of the failure of Shirley to reconcile warring points of view, and at times are severe in their description of incoher­ ent elements of the plotting. Notes 167 6. Dickens spent much less time conducting research for A Child's History of England, published serially in Household Words beginning with the January issue of 1851. He relied almost entirely on Thomas Keightley's History of England (published in three volumes in 1839). Less than a decade later, in A Tale of Two Cities, his eye was, once more, on matters other than an historical accuracy that might be narrowly defined. Edgar Johnson, his biographer, notes, with some surprise, that 'the number of people and events are fewer and their intricately linked plot relationships seem more artificial in this tightly constructed, concentrated, and swiftly moving story than they do when Dickens is working on a larger scale.' Charles Dickens I His Tragedy and Triumph (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), Vol. II, p. 980. 7. Northrop Frye, 'Conclusion', Literary History of Canada, Second Edition, edited by Carl F. Klinck, Alfred G. Bailey, Claude Bissell, Roy Daniells, Desmond Pacey, and Northrop Frye (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), Vol. II, p. 350. 8. Ibid. 9. Alan Swingewood, The Novel and Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1975), p. 8. 10. Ibid., pp. 8-9. 11. Mary Eagleton and David Pierce, Attitudes to Class in the English Novel I from Walter Scott to David Storey (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979}, p. 10. 12. Ibid., p. 12. 13. Nicholas Rance, The Historical Novel and Popular Politics in Nineteenth­ Century England (London: Vision Press, 1975}, p. 82. 14. Frank Kermode, 'An Approach through History', in Towards a Poetics of Fiction, edited by Mark Spilka (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1977), p. 25. 15. Ibid. 16. Victor E. Neuberg notes that the readers of Victorian romances, all of which took a high moral tone, were also avid readers of the more vio­ lent gothic romances, and adds, 'the continuing acceptance of the dichotomy between violence and morality seems to be reflected in contemporary journalism. The readers of the more sensational Sun­ day newspapers appear to find little difficulty in accepting the most salacious details of murder and sex crimes together with the highly moral fiction offered, for example, in women's magazines.' Popular Literature I A History and Guide I From the beginning of printing to the year 1897 (London: Woburn Press, 1977), p.