Poetic Justice in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century British Fiction

This book traces the literary and social history of the concept of poetic justice with reference to the beginning of the novel in England and in the context of eighteenth and nineteenth century fiction by Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. Examining the implications of class and gender in the work of these novelists, the author emphasizes their intersections to forward a jargon free, reader friendly and theoretically informed Marxist feminist interpretation of these works within the overarching rubric of the idea of poetic justice.