The World in Play : Portraits of a Victorian Concept

__The World in Play__ tells the story of how certain Victorian literary misfits—working-class melodramatists of the 1830s, the reclusive Emily Brontë, free-spirits Robert Louis Stevenson and John Muir, mischievous Oscar Wilde, among others—struggled to find their bearings in a modern world trapped, like Alice, in play, in a ludic microcosm of itself. Nineteenth-century Britain was a world in play. The Victorians invented the weekend and built hundreds of parks and playgrounds. In the wake of Darwin, they re-imagined nature as a contest for survival. The playful child became a symbol of the future. A world in play means two things: a world in flux and a world trapped, like Alice in Wonderland, in a ludic microcosm of itself. The book explores the extent to which play (competition, leisure, mischief, luck, festivity, imagination) pervades nineteenth-century literature and culture and forms the foundations of the modern self. Play made the Victorian world cohere and betrayed the illusoriness of that coherence. This is the paradox of modernity. Kaiser gives an account of how certain Victorian misfits—working-class melodramatists of the 1830s, the reclusive Emily Brontë, free spirits Robert Louis Stevenson and John Muir, mischievous Oscar Wilde—struggled to make sense of this new world. In so doing, they discovered the art of modern life. The World in Play tells the story of how certain Victorian literary misfits-working-class melodramatists of the 1830s, the reclusive Emily Bronte, free-spirits Robert Louis Stevenson and John Muir, mischievous Oscar Wilde, among others-struggled to find their bearings in a modern world trapped, like Alice, in play, in a ludic microcosm of itself. Mapping the world in play -- Fair play in an ugly world : the politics of nautical melodrama -- Toying with the future in Wuthering Heights -- A joy on the precipice of death : Muir and Stevenson in California -- Wilde's folly