Why were the Victorians so passionate about History?

How did this passion relate to another Victorian obsession - the woman question? In a brilliant and provocative study, Christina Crosby investigates the links between the Victorians' fascination with history and with the nature of women.

Discussing both key novels and non-literary texts - Daniel Deronda and Hegel's Philosophy of History; Henry Esmond and Macaulay's History of England; Little Dorrit, Wilkie Collins' The Frozen Deep, and Mayhew's survey of labour and the poor; Villette, Patrick Fairburn's The Typology of Scripture and Ruskin's Modern Painters - she argues that the construction of middle-class Victorian man as the universal subject of history entailed the identification of women as those who are before, beyond, above, or below history. Crosby's analysis raises a crucial question for today's feminists - how can one read historically without replicating the problem of nineteenth century history?

The book was first published in 1991.