Victorian Narratives of Failed Emigration by Tamara S Wagner - 9780367881153

Victorian Narratives of Failed EmigrationSettlers, Returnees, and Nineteenth-Century Literature in English\nAuthor(s): Tamara S Wagner\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge\nISBN-13: 9780367881153, 978-0367881153\nSynopsis\nIn her study of the unsuccessful nineteenth-century emigrant, Tamara S. Wagner argues that failed emigration and return drive nineteenth-century writing in English in unexpected, culturally revealing ways. Wagner highlights the hitherto unexplored subgenre of anti-emigration writing that emerged as an important counter-current to a pervasive emigration propaganda machine that was pressing popular fiction into its service. The exportation of characters at the end of a novel indisputably formed a convenient narrative solution that at once mirrored and exaggerated public policies about so-called 'superfluous' or 'redundant' parts of society. Yet the very convenience of such pat endings was increasingly called into.