Equity and Nineteenth-Century British Literature

What role does literature assume when legal institutions fail to deliver justice? This volume places the concept of equity at the centre of nineteenth-century English law and literature studies, addressing a dimension that has received remarkably little attention despite the prominence of legal themes in the period. Against the backdrop of the institutional crisis of the Court of Chancery, the volume examines how novels, drama, and poetry engaged with questions of conscience, judgment, and fairness. Ranging from early nineteenth-century melodrama to Dickens, Gaskell, the Brontës, Collins, George Eliot, and Hardy, the contributions show that literary texts did more than expose the shortcomings of the law. By imagining alternative forms of redress and giving “standing” to those excluded from legal protection, Victorian literature articulated and enacted equity as a form of natural justice. Moving beyond approaches that focus on law in literature, the volume argues for understanding literature as a constitutive force in the cultural history of justice and equity. It offers a new perspective for scholars of law and literature, Victorian studies, legal history, and nineteenth-century English culture.