SUNY Press Catalog - Spring 2009 - (Page 61) literature Kay Heath AGING BY THE BOOK The Emergence of Midlife in Victorian Britain Kay Heath Uncovers the origins of midlife anxiety in Victorian print culture. LITErArY rEMAINS Representations of Death and Burial in Victorian England Mary Elizabeth Hotz Explores Victorian responses to death and burial in literature, journalism, and legal writing. Literary Remains explores the unexpectedly central role of death and burial in Victorian England. As Alan Ball, creator of HBO’s Six Feet Under, quipped, “Once you put a dead body in the room, you can talk about anything.” So, too, with the Victorians: dead bodies, especially their burial and cremation, engaged the passionate attention of leading Victorians, from sanitary reformers like Edwin Chadwick to bestselling novelists like Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, and Bram Stoker. Locating corpses at the center of an extensive range of concerns, including money and law, medicine and urban architecture, social planning and folklore, religion and national identity, Mary Elizabeth Hotz draws on a range of legal, administrative, journalistic, and literary writing to offer a thoughtful meditation on Victorian attitudes toward death and burial, as well as how those attitudes influenced present-day deathway practices. Literary Remains gives new meaning to the phrase that serves as its significant theme: “Taught by death what life should be.” “I read this fascinating book with great pleasure. It makes a valuable contribution to the study of Victorian practices of death and burial and will be an essential supplement to existing studies of the culture of Victorian melancholy and bereavement.” — Joel Faflak, author of Romantic Psychoanalysis:The Burden of the Mystery Mary Elizabeth Hotz, a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart, is Associate Professor of English at the University of San Diego. A volume in the SUNY series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century Pamela K. Gilbert, editor JANuArY • 217 pp • 2 figures $70.00 jacketed hc 978-0-7914-7659-8 Aging by the Book offers an innovative look at the ways The Emergence of Midlife in Victorian Britain in which middle age, which for centuries had been considered the prime of life, was transformed during the Victorian era into a period of decline. Single women were nearing middle age at thirty, and mothers in their forties were expected to become sexless; meanwhile, fortyish men anguished over whether their “time for love had gone by.” Looking at wellknown novels of the period, as well as advertisements, cartoons, and medical and advice manuals, Kay Heath uncovers how this ideology of decline permeated a changing culture. Aging by the Book unmasks and confronts midlife anxiety by examining its origins, demonstrating that our current negative attitude toward midlife springs from Victorian roots, and arguing that only when we understand the culturally constructed nature of age can we expose its ubiquitous and stealthy influence. AGING BY THE BOOK “From the shrewd situating of middle age as the liminal rather than central stage between youth and age to insightful rereadings of the marriage plot in relation to narratives of decline, Kay Heath’s Aging by the Book is a significant contribution to both age studies and Victorian studies.” — Teresa Mangum, author of Married, Middlebrow, and Militant: Sarah Grand and the New Woman Novel Kay Heath is Associate Professor of English at Virginia State University. A volume in the SUNY series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century Pamela K. Gilbert, editor fEBruArY • 272 pp • 14 illustrations $75.00 jacketed hc 978-0-7914-7657-4 directtext e directtext dt e P dt www.sunypress.edu 61 P http://www.sunypress.edu http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61725 http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61727
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