First published in 1985, this book looks at the ways in which the spate of terrorist activity in the 1880s was reflected in the novels of the time. Oscar Wilde, George Gissing, Henry James and George Bernard Shaw among others gave the terrorist venture a position in one or more of their novels. This book examines what these novelists made of terrorism and the way they presented it to their readers. Not all of these novels are high literature or take a committed line on the outrages they describe; nevertheless they accept the assumption that terrorism and social protest were synonymous. This book aims to explain how such a view could be held in the context of Victorian society.
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