= On volume 1: The essays in this volume trace the experimentation of nineteenth-century writers in advancing new modes of realist fiction while revitalizing the inheritance of the Gothic and the Romantic.Focusing on some of the most popular novels of the century (Northanger Abbey, Jayne Eyre, Dombey and Son, Middlemarch, Far from the Madding Crowd and Germinal), this attractive volume explores some of the recurring themes in nineteenth-century fiction:aspiration and vocation; social class; sexual politics; political reform; colonialism and commerce.This is an ideal introduction to some of the major fictional achievements of the first industrial era, and to most of the crucial themes in nineteenth-century fiction. On volume 2: The essays in this collection show how the conventions of realism were transformed by new ideas about gender and race. The Nineteenth-Century Novel: Identities provides an ideal starting point for understanding gender in the novels of this period. It explores the place of fiction in constructing gender identity within society at large, considering Madame Bovary, Portrait of a Lady and The Woman in White. The book continues with a consideration of the novel at the fin de siecle, examining Dracula, The Awakening and Heart of Darkness. These fascinating essays illuminate the ways in which the conventions of realism were disrupted as much by anxieties surrounding colonialism, decadence, degeneration and the 'New Woman' as by those new ideas about human psychology which heralded the advent of psychoanalysis. The concepts which are crucial to the understanding of the literature and society of the nineteenth century are brilliantly explained and discussed in this essential volume.