By Accident Or Design - Writing the Victorian Metropolis

By Accident or Design explains how and why the Victorians were fascinated by accidents, including omnibus collisions, fires, and railway crashes, and how these accidents offered a way to describe how large, complex things like cities might grow and change.

List of contents

• Introduction


• 1: Accidents in the News


• 2: Dickens and the Traffic of Accidents


• 3: Industrial Accidents and Novel Insurances


• 4: Street Literature and the Remediation of Accident


• 5: Chaos and Connections on the Victorian Railway


• Afterword: An Accidental Excursion

About the author

Paul Fyfe is Associate Professor in the Department of English and program faculty in the Communications, Rhetoric, and Digital Media program at North Carolina State University. He earned a PhD from the University of Virginia and developed specialties in Victorian literature as well as book and media history. At NC State, he teaches courses in nineteenth-century British literature, technologies of texts and writing, and digital humanities.

Summary

By Accident or Design explains how and why the Victorians were fascinated by accidents, including omnibus collisions, fires, and railway crashes, and how these accidents offered a way to describe how large, complex things like cities might grow and change.

Additional text

By Accident or Design constitutes a thoughtful and richly dense literary-historical study of chance, risk and accident in the Victorian city, and one that is alert to the many debates with which it engages.

Product details

• Authors: Paul Fyfe, Paul (Assistant Professor Fyfe
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 15.06.2020
• EAN: 9780198834182
• ISBN: 978-0-19-883418-2
• No. of pages: 256
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, European History, English, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Georgian Era (1714-1837), LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 19th Century, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Victorian Era (1837-1901), c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, 18th century, c 1700 to c 1799, British & Irish history, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900