What Exactly is the Neo-Victorian Novel?

While thumbing around the internet for Victorian fiction stuff, I kept coming across references to the Neo-Victorian Novel, but no definitions or explanations of what in the world it is, so as always when I come across a mystery, I researched the crap out of it! Here is a digital trail of where this question took me across the internet and my ultimate conclusions.

A Plethora of Definitions

• The Little Professor’s Rules for Writing Neo-Victorian Novels is a satirical list of rules for writing a clichéd Victorian novel. Don't freak out if you are writing a novel right now that does any of these rules because people who like genre fiction like reading the same type of stuff, but maybe let this be an inspiration to take one of these clichés and put a spin on it to make it new without taking away from what avid fans of such genre fiction love.

photo credit: heather via photopin cc

• The Neo-Victorian page on Wikipedia doesn't define the Neo-Victorian Novel but defines Neo-Victorian as a fad involving people putting modern spins on the Victorian aesthetic. For example, a Victorian telephone with no wires and push buttons instead of the traditional spin-dialer would be a Neo-Victorian telephone. Interesting indeed. I think a lot of Steampunk stuff falls into this category.

• Neo-Victorian Group on Goodreads defines itself as a group of people who like to read novels written in modern times that are set in the Victorian period; however, going through some of their pages, a pattern begins to appear regarding a desire for mystery novels, romance, and some thrillers. This seems to be a throwback to The Little Professor’s definition … that is at least at first but later new findings suggest this Goodreads page may have started based off of a different viewpoint.

• The English 623 Neo-Victorian Novel English Course suggests on its front page that the Neo-Victorian Novel is the modern novel that takes a spin on one of the classics or another Victorian novel written during the times. I doubt Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith is on their course reading list, but I could imagine them putting Drood by Dan Simmons in this category. Click on their Policies page for the class' actual reading list.

The above page refers to the word postmodern a lot and the next two resources do it even more … so:

A Quick Definition of Postmodernism

photo credit: Wallie-The-Frog via photopin cc

... as quick as I can get it ... sigh. Postmodern is a word that is thrown around a lot, especially in college, and it always tends to be defined in really difficult terms wherever you find it defined. Even PBS has a difficult time defining it without getting all academic on us. But basically postmodern is a way of thinking that modern people have - Victorians did not have post-modern thought. They were of the “modernist” thought time period.

Postmodernism’s primary principal seems to be that everything is relative - which is the simplest definition I can boil it down to, but it is a bit more complex than that. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary does a better job of defining each of its uses because it’s also used just to describe things that are modern sometimes, so in the following examples that use the word postmodern, who knows if they are just saying it’s a modern novel or if they are calling upon the complex definition of postmodern and going with Merriam-Webster's definition 2a or b. Got to click to get what I'm saying.

Back to the Neo-Victorian Novel Definition and What Academics Say?

• The Redemptive Past in the Neo-Victorian Novel by Dana Shiller is an academic paper that goes into detail regarding the theories of Fredric Jameson who thinks the modern (postmodern) approach to historical fiction further distances our society from what actually happened. This is a very academic paper, so put on your smart spectacles. At the very bottom of page two we get the author's argument: "...neo-Victorian fiction addresses many of Jameson's concerns by presenting a historicity that is indeed concerned with recuperating the substance of bygone eras and not merely their styles." 

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• Now if you really want to get academic check out this Academia.edu's page on the Neo-Victorian Novel for a listing of various academic papers and articles on the subject.

She goes on to say that she will use A.S. Byratt's Possession and Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton as examples of neo-Victorian novels. Both take place partly in the nineteenth century and explore how "present circumstances shape historical narrative."

I'd like to point out that the cover of Possession is the same picture used as the cover of the Goodreads group for Neo-Victorian novels. The pattern continues! And perhaps the Goodreads group isn’t founded on the joys of the genre Victorian novel.

Amazon says Possession is a story of two scholars researching two Victorian poets and that it's a story of mystery and romance. So according to Dana Shiller's definition, and apparently the Goodreads group agrees on this to what extent is not clear, a Neo-Victorian novel is a novel about modern people looking back onto the past of the Victorian times. 

Books on Neo-Victorian Fiction

You can also find more academic papers like Shiller’s by just searching Neo-Victorian and academic on Goodgle. A bunch come up. I kept finding a lot of academic information on the Neo-Victorian Novel, but piecing together a general academic viewpoint from various random papers on the subject isn’t going to happen. So I decided to go to the place academics get information out into the world and no - it's not online. Academics go old school with ... what are those things called again, oh right books.

photo credit: Klara Kim via photopin cc

• Neo-Victorian Fiction and Historical Narrative by Louisa Hadley. The book description is actually an argument for the definition that Neo-Victorian Novels are dedicated to historical specificity. The fact that the book description is an argument for the definition might mean that the definition of the Neo-Victorian Novel is not agreed upon among academics yet. It may still be a topic of debate in the academic world of literature.

• History and Cultural Memory in Neo-Victorian Fiction by Kate Mitchell. The book description says it examines rewritings of the Victorian period by such authors as A.S. Byatt, Sarah Waters, Gail Jones, and Graham Swift. This seems to be going back to the definition we found in the English 623 webpage regarding writers who give a new spin to stories from Victorian times. Another clue that this is a still a topic of debate.

So from this research it seems to me that there are either multiple accepted definitions of Neo-Victorian or there are multiple definitions argued because people are not in agreement yet. 

Got any research to add? Which definition works for you?