Law, Literature, and the Transmission of Culture in England, 1837–1925 (review)

What is a “will”? In one sense, a will is a legal document that expresses intention; it is a statement by a person regarding how his or her property is to be distributed upon his or her death. In a broader sense, it is also an expression of an aspect of one’s character, a final effort to have one’s “will” prevail after death and, often, far into the future. As a legal document, the will provides a last opportunity for the deceased to express to survivors, sometimes cruelly, exactly what he or she thought of them. Thus, a will can serve both as a statement of how one’s worldly goods are to be distributed and as an “embodiment” of a testator’s character.

Because how one manages one’s property displays one’s social standing and identity, one’s will conveys much more than intentions regarding worldly goods. To this point, Catherine O. Frank cites The English Illustrated Magazine: “The character of a man is usually stamped on his will.” And she notes that a writer for All the Year Round observed that one of the principal purposes of a will is “to prevent strife and confusion” (22). Some Victorian wills were, however, “peculiar” and attracted readers of The Strand Magazine to ponder the “romantic” contents of “the vast vaults and strong rooms beneath the Probate Registry” (22).

For students of Victorian periodicals, Chapter 1, “Writing the Will: Victorian Testators and Legal Culture,” is probably the most relevant. There, Frank discusses just how popular the topic of wills was during the Victorian period and beyond by citing a broad range of magazines that carried articles on the subject. The Leisure Hour, Once a Week, Household Words, The Spectator, the Quarterly Review, the Contemporary Review, and Temple Bar all published articles dealing with wills. Sometimes the title of the article suggests the tone and content: “Strange Wills,” “Extraordinary Wills,” and “Testamentary Curiosities,” for example. As one might expect, such articles varied from whimsical to serious.

From this discussion of wills and periodicals, Frank turns to the role of wills in Victorian literature more generally. In doing so, she notes that Victorian periodicals regularly published “stories on legal themes or those which used legal incidents to advance their plots” (68). She notes, for instance, Ellen Wood’s “A Last Will and Testament” (Bentley’s Miscellany), Sheridan LeFanu’s “Squire Toby’s Will” (Temple Bar), and C. Grenville Murray’s “Old Joquelin’s Bequest: A Tale about Women” (Cornhill). Of course, she discusses at considerably greater length and with considerable care, Casaubon’s will in Middlemarch and the importance to Mr. Harding of the will in The Warden.

Catherine Frank has done a fine job of pointing out the various ways in which the relationship between law and literature enriches our understanding of Victorian culture. Readers of VPR would probably like more direct dealing with periodicals; however, they should not overlook this study. It deals with critical and philosophical aspects of our subject both suggestively and interestingly.