The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Literature and the Environment-nurbook

The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Literature and the Environment book cover

The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Literature and the Environment

Author(s): Dennis Denisoff

Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: May 7, 2026
Language: English
Print length: 332 pages
ISBN-10: 1009412817
ISBN-13: 9781009412810

Book Description

Today’s environmental decimation and climate crises have arisen from our drive for individual material prosperity. We even appreciate nature primarily for its fulfilment of our interests, whether economic productivity, aesthetic pleasure, or personal well-being. And yet, we still ask how we have reached this dire ecological condition and what it is that has kept us from acting effectively to maintain a thriving and diverse biosphere. This collection of essays by major scholars from around the world analyzes how the industrial, imperialist Victorian era gave rise to today’s unwillingness to move beyond our acquisitive drive. But it also explores the Victorians’ initiation of the modern environmentalist movement, formulation of the first legislation defending rights of nonhuman animals, and invention of literary forms for contesting environmental degradation. In this most unlikely of eras, the volume uncovers both valuable insights into the limitations of our own environmentalism and innovative suggestions for overcoming them.

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Introduces readers to the myriad ways in which Victorian literature may shed revealing light on the state of environmentalism today.

About the Author

Dennis Denisoff is McFarlin Chair of English at the University of Tulsa and recipient of the President’s Award from both the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association and the North American Victorian Studies Association. He is a past Sarwan Sahota Distinguished Scholar at Toronto Metropolitan University, a recent Visiting Distinguished Researcher at Queen Mary University of London, and the 2025 Ruth and Lillian Marino Chair of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. He is the author of Decadent Ecology in British Literature and Art, 1860–1910 (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

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