Customer Reviews

Victorian Fantasy Literature: Literary Battles With Church and Empire (Studies in British Literature)

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I borrowed this book from my university library as its price far outweighs my student budget. As an aspiring literary scholar with an interest in both fantasy as literature and the literary canon, I found Michalson's study to be provocative and enlightening. She analyzes the life and works of five Victorian writers whose fantasy works have been neglected by scholars: John Ruskin, George MacDonald, Charles Kingsley, Henry Rider Haggard, and Rudyard Kipling. She shows how the influence of both the Anglican Church and British empire building on the nascent British education system prevented fantasy from gaining respect in academic circles. This is important because even though the religion and politics have disappeared, contemporary scholars have inherited the attitude that fantasy is disreputable. I'm tempted to show it to some of my professors who don't consider fantasy to be serious literature.