Book Explores Deeper Meanings in Victorian Fantasy Literature

A newly revised and expanded book explores how Victorian fantasy literature flourished in opposition to the repressive social and intellectual conditions of the time. Stephen Prickett's "Victorian Fantasy," reissued by Baylor University Press, examines the way in which Victorian writers used non-realistic techniques--nonsense, dreams, visions and the creation of other worlds--to extend their understanding of this world.
In particular, Prickett focuses on six writers (Lear, Carroll, Kingsley, MacDonald, Kipling and Nesbit), tracing the development of their art form, their influence on each other and how these writers used fantasy to question the ideology of Victorian culture and society.
"Victorian Fantasy is one of the few critical works which has lasted, deservedly, for 25 years," writes Philip Davis, author of "The Victorians" in the new "Oxford English Literary History."
"Here in its reappearance in an expanded second edition, it once again takes fantasy beyond the easy evasions of a merely comfortable 'alternative,' out to the very limits of imaginative thought and belief."
Prickett, who received his doctorate from Cambridge University, is the director of Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor and is the author or editor of 11 volumes, including "Narrative, Religion, and Science," "The Bible and Literature," "Origins of Narrative" and "Words and the Word."
Prickett can be reached at (254) 710-4968 or by email at Stephen_Prickett@baylor.edu .