Victorian Writing about Risk Imagining a Safe England in a Dangerous World [Hardcover]

This book, first published in 2000, explores the geography of risk produced by a wide spectrum of once-popular literature.In Victorian Writing about Risk, Elaine Freedgood explores a wide spectrum of once-popular literature, including works on political economy, sanitary reform, balloon flight, and African exploration. The consolations offered by this geography of risk are precariously predicated on the stability of dominant Victorian definitions of people and places. Women, men, the labouring and middle classes, Africa and Africans: all have assigned identities which allow risk to be located and contained. When identities shift and boundaries fail, danger and safety begin to appear in all the wrong places.In Victorian Writing about Risk, Elaine Freedgood explores a wide spectrum of once-popular literature, including works on political economy, sanitary reform, balloon flight, and African exploration. The consolations offered by this geography of risk are precariously predicated on the stability of dominant Victorian definitions of people and places. Women, men, the labouring and middle classes, Africa and Africans: all have assigned identities which allow risk to be located and contained. When identities shift and boundaries fail, danger and safety begin to appear in all the wrong places.In Victorian Writing about Risk, Elaine Freedgood explores a wide spectrum of once-popular literature, including works on political economy, sanitary reform, balloon flight, and African exploration. The consolations offered by this geography of risk are precariously predicated on the stability of dominant Victorian definitions of people and places. Women, men, the laboring and middle classes, Africa and Africans: all have assigned identities that allow risk to be located and contained. When identities shift and boundaries fail, danger and safety begin to appear in all the wrong places.List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction: the practice of paradise; 1. Banishing panicls¦