Writing the Stage Coach Nation
Many Victorian novels take place not in the steam-powered railway present of that era, but in the recent past: a world moving by stage and mail coach. Ruth Livesey explores the historical consciousness of such works by Dickens, Brontë, Eliot, and Hardy, and explains how they convey an idea of a national belonging through a sense of local place.
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Why is it that so many of the best-loved novels of the Victorian era take place not in the steam-powered railway present in which they were published, but in the very recent past? Most works by Dickens, Brontë, Eliot, and Hardy set action neither in the present nor in a definitively historical epoch but rather in a 'just' past of collective memory, a vanishing but still tangible world moving by stage and mail coach. Ruth Livesey brings to the surface the historical consciousness of such novels of the 'just' past and explores how they convey an idea of a national belonging that can be experienced through a sense of local place.
