A User’s Manual

Abstract

We created an online questionnaire, listed about 2,000 characters from 201 canonical British novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and asked respondents to select individual characters and answer questions about them. Potential research participants were identified by scanning lists of faculty in hundreds of English departments worldwide and selecting specialists in nineteenth-century British literature, especially scholars specializing in the novel. Lists of English departments are available on the web, and most departments give a listing of faculty that contains information about their teaching and research interests. Invitations were also sent to multiple listservs dedicated to the discussion of Victorian literature or specific authors or groups of authors in our study. Approximately 519 respondents completed a total of 1,470 questionnaires on 435 characters from 134 novels. A copy of the questionnaire used in the study can be accessed at the following URL: http://http://www-personal.umich.edu /~kruger/carroll-survey.html. (The form is no longer active and will not be used to collect data.)