Provincial Fiction of Mitford, Gaskell and Eliot

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Provincial Fiction of Mitford, Gaskell and Eliot is written by Kevin A. Morrison and published by Edinburgh University Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1399516108 (ISBN 10) and 9781399516105 (ISBN 13).

Although Elizabeth Gaskell was influenced by Mary Russell Mitford, and George Eliot by Gaskell, only a small number of scholars have considered the affinities and resemblances among all three writers of provincial fiction, and none have done so in depth. Establishing a chain of influence, this book considers Mitford, Gaskell, and Eliot's interrelated careers, including the challenges they encountered in achieving distinction within the literary sphere, and the various pressures exerted on them by publishers, reviewers, and editors. It also analyses the career-enhancing possibilities afforded by different modes of publication-including periodicals, anthologies, the three-volume novel, and monthly and bimonthly instalments-as well as their concomitant limitations. In so doing, the book offers a reassessment of Mitford's and Gaskell's provincial fiction, which has been frequently derided as a 'minor literature'. It also demonstrates the importance of their work to the development of Eliot's liberalism in the age of high realism.