摆在读者面前的这部《维多利亚人》，是牛津大学出版社为新世纪策划的十三卷英国文学史系列中的第8卷，也是最早出版的分卷之一。作者大学英文教授菲利普·戴维斯。本书打破了在我国的外国文学教学研究中常见的思维定式，以社会和文化背景为主线，分析、归纳和总结了1830-1880年这一历史时期英国文学的特点及成因。

本书迥异于一般文学史写作遵循年代顺序的模式，以对整个社会和思想观念产生深远影响的若干重大主题为线索，分析、归纳和总结了1830-1880年这一历史时期英国文学的特点及成因，此外，书的卷末附有数十位维多利亚作家小传，并介绍了其作品的可靠版本及相关的评论专著。本书史料丰富，见解独到，不仅是颇具特色的文学史，亦可作为通论维多利亚社会历史文化的专著，实为不可多得的上佳之作。

General Editor's Preface

List of Figures

A Note on References

Introduction

1. Rural to Urban 1830-1850

Ⅰ. A NewWorld

Ⅱ. The Challenge to Thinking

2. Nature

Ⅰ. Darwin and the Impact of Science

Ⅱ. Cosmologies and Anthropomorphisms: Darwin,Spencer, and Ruskin

Ⅲ. Beyond Nature and After Religion: The Future in J. S. Mill and T. H. Huxley

3. Religion

Ⅰ. 1830-1850: Evangelicalism, the Broad Church,and Tractarianism

Ⅱ. The Mid-Victorian Change

4. Mind

Ⅰ.'The New Psychology': Psychology as a Branchof Science

Ⅱ.'Psychology is pre-eminently a philosophical science'

Ⅲ. Psychology, the Unconscious, and Literature

5. Conditions of Literary Production

Ⅰ. The Literary Profession, the Book Trade and Culture

Ⅱ. The Rise of Prose

Ⅲ. New Voices

6. The Drama

7. Debatable Lands: Variety of Form and Genre in

the Early Victorian Novel

Ⅰ. Post-Aristocratic: Bulwer-Lytton, Disraeli,and Kingsley

Ⅱ. Post-Aristocratic: Thackeray versus Dickens

8. Alternative Fictions

Ⅰ. The Sensation Novel

Ⅱ. Fairy Tales and Fantasies

9. High Realism

Ⅰ. Two Novels of the 183os and their Legacy

Ⅱ. Trollope and George Eliot

10. Lives and Thoughts

Ⅰ. Life-Writing

Ⅱ. Writings about Life

11. Poetry

Ⅰ. The Form in Difficulties

Ⅱ. Long Poems and Sequence Poems

Ⅲ. From May to September: Poetry and Belief

Conclusion

Author Bibliograpbies

Suggestions for Further Reading

Index