Intersections of Gender, Class, and Race in the Long Nineteenth Century and Beyond ed. by Barbara Leonardi (review)

Questions about the purposes and goals of edited collections arose for me as I studied independent scholar Barbara Leonardi's collection, Intersections of Gender, Class, and Race in the Long Nineteenth Century and Beyond. Should collections be as focused as possible in their topics, or aim to cast a wide net? Should contributors be established names, or emerging scholars? And how should editors select contributors: begin with a circle of friends and associates, or orchestrate an open call and hope for the best? If a collection begins in a conference, how closely should the collection hew to the original proceedings? There are no clear answers to such questions, of course; this is why new reviews of new collections attend to the particular circumstances and materials.

In this collection, some contributions come from institutions close to and affiliated with the editor's graduate institution (Stirling), and others come from independent scholars known to the editor; thus, the collection has a family feel both in theme and in its approach to Victorian studies. There is much here that will be of interest to scholars of Victorian literature "and beyond," as the title implies. Enough of the collection stretches into the twentieth century for it to warrant attention from scholars outside of Victorian circles. However, I cannot imagine a reader who will have a use for all of the essays, or who will be able to clearly articulate the relationship between the collection's broad yet overlapping sections. Three of the essays emerged from a 2016 conference in Scotland called "Gender Stereotypes in the Long Nineteenth Century," but the nine essays that were solicited in the months after the conference expand well beyond this original scope (vii). After an introduction that unites all of the essays under "the family metaphor," the collection divides itself into sections focused on non-normative representations of maternity, masculinity, domesticity, and empire (2). Chronologically, too, the essays are arranged in a freewheeling fashion; for example, chapter 5 is about early- to mid-twentiethcentury short stories, chapter 10 ranges from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, and the final chapter returns to the mid-nineteenth century. The collection's introduction experiments with strategies for ordering these wide-ranging essays, suggesting that the "perceptions of womanhood and motherhood" may be at the center of the constellation of essays, as "the core around which all gender expectations were defined" (1). Methodologies vary widely as well; the editor offers the "family metaphor" in "dialogue between queer, feminist, post-colonial theory, history, literatures in English, and cultural studies" (3).

This volume is part of the series Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture, a monograph series that boldly announces a "shift from critical theory to cultural history that has affected … every field within the discipline of English literature" (ii). Indeed, the emphasis across the essays is on situating specific texts and genres within sociocultural contexts. The chapters that connect most closely with this goal are those that treat social history rather than literature. Chapter 9, by Stephen Etheridge, is a sociohistorical overview of masculinity in the context of the military and military dress. The wideness of the umbrella for this edited collection facilitates the inclusion of essays like this one, rooted in the examination of specialized texts from military periodicals. The essay was unexpectedly fascinating—a well-researched excursion into social history that ranged across the geographical scope of Great Britain. The other chapter that engages more with social history than with history-through-literature is chapter 12, by Michael Bedo. It focuses on an overlooked divorce case of the nineteenth century, Russell v. Russell (1891), which is presented as an important precursor to, explanation for, and companion to more studied social struggles caused by closeted homosexuality and bisexuality, such as the Oscar Wilde trials.

Chapters...