Environmental Neo-Victorianism

Environmental Neo-Victorianism is a study of nine Neo-Victorian novels written since 2000 that explore the relationship between human beings and the environment in the context of the British Empire and the discourses of nature that validated it. Using a combination of ecocritical and postcolonial approaches centred on the themes of land, extraction and planetary scales, the book investigates how selected Neo-Victorian fiction traces the origins of the current environmental crisis to nineteenth-century colonial and capitalist practices. The book argues that Neo-Victorianism’s dual concern with the material realities and cultural models of the nineteenth century past is valuable in exposing the discourses that underpinned Victorian approaches to nature, while the genre’s self-referential attention to the modes of representation allows it to uncover the continuities between the Victorian period and the present. By focusing on a genre, the Neo-Victorian novel, that has not yet been discussed in relation to contemporary environmental concerns, this book offers a distinctive contribution to critical discussions of literature and the Anthropocene.