Coda: Writing as the Victorians

Abstract

In exploring the process of reading Victorian textual remains, Possession and Ever After highlight the ways in which the Victorians are read in the contemporary moment. Since the Victorian texts are mostly mediated to the reader through the twentieth-century characters, these novels draw attention to the mediated nature of our engagement with Victorian literature. Consequently, Byatt and Swift prompt the reader to self-consciously reflect upon the genre of neo-Victorian fiction. They raise the question of why we continue to read Victorian and neo-Victorian fictions in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Contemporary culture’s interest in Victorian literature is evident in the continual republication of Victorian ‘classics’, often justified by new introductions or marketed as tie-ins to the numerous screen adaptations of such texts. Despite the over-saturation of the market, the popularity of neo-Victorian fiction suggests that the reading public’s appetite for Victorian stories has not yet been satiated. As I suggested in the Introduction, Victorian literature’s position on publisher’s lists of ‘classic’ texts indicates one of the reasons that we continue to read Victorian novels; the Victorian novel is considered the exemplar of the novel genre.