The Labour of Literature in Britain and France, 1830-1910: Authorial Work Ethics (Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture)

This volume examines the anxieties that caused many nineteenth-century writers to insist on literature as a laboured and labouring enterprise. Following Isaac D’Israeli’s gloss on Jean de La Bruyère, it asks, in particular, whether writing should be ‘called __working’__. Whereas previous studies have focused on national literatures in isolation, this volume demonstrates the two-way traffic between British and French conceptions of literary labour. It questions assumed areas of affinity and difference, beginning with the labour politics of the early nineteenth century and their common root in the French Revolution. It also scrutinises the received view of France as a source of a ‘leisure ethic’, and of British writers as either rejecting or self-consciously mimicking French models. Individual essays consider examples of how different writers approached their work, while also evoking a broader notion of ‘work __ethics’__, understood as a humane practice, whereby values, benefits, and responsibilities, are weighed up. Front Matter ....Pages i-xv Introduction: Literature and Labour (Marcus Waithe, Claire White)....Pages 1-22 Front Matter ....Pages 23-25 ‘[A] common and not a divided interest’: Literature and the Labour of Representation (Jan-Melissa Schramm)....Pages 27-42 The Literature of Labour: Collective Biography and Working-Class Authorship, 1830–1859 (Richard Salmon)....Pages 43-59 George Sand, Digging (Claire White)....Pages 61-78 Front Matter ....Pages 79-80 Ruskin, Browning/Alpenstock, Hatchet (Ross Wilson)....Pages 81-96 Flaubert’s Cailloux: Hard Labour and the Beauty of Stones (Patrick M. Bray)....Pages 97-110 Marian Evans, George Eliot, and the Work of Sententiousness (Ruth Livesey)....Pages 111-126 Front Matter ....Pages 127-129 Baudelaire and the Dilettante Work Ethic (Richard Hibbitt)....Pages 131-145 ‘Strenuous Minds’: Walter Pater and the Labour of Aestheticism (Marcus Waithe)....Pages 147-165 The Work of Imitation: Decadent Writing as Mimetic Labour (Matthew Potolsky)....Pages 167-181 Front Matter ....Pages 183-185 Literary Machines: George Gissing’s Lost Illusions (Edmund Birch)....Pages 187-201 Worlds of Work and the Work of Words: Zola (Susan Harrow)....Pages 203-219 Gender Difference and Cultural Labour in French Fiction from Zola to Colette (Nicholas White)....Pages 221-236 Coda: Immaterial Labour and the Modernist Work of Literature (Morag Shiach)....Pages 237-252 Epilogue: Work Ethics, Past and Present (Marcus Waithe, Claire White)....Pages 253-257 Back Matter ....Pages 259-268 Annotation This volume examines the anxieties that caused many 19th-century writers to insist on literature as a laboured and labouring enterprise. Following Isaac D'Israeli's gloss on Jean de La Bruyère, it asks, in particular, whether writing should be 'called working'. Whereas previous studies have focused on national literatures in isolation, the volume demonstrates the two-way traffic between British and French conceptions of literary labour. It questions assumed areas of affinity and difference, beginning with the labour politics of the early 19th century and their common root in the French Revolution. It also scrutinises the received view of France as a source of a 'leisure ethic', and of British writers as either rejecting or self-consciously mimicking French models