Decadence and dread: three novels of the fin-de-siècle

Join us for a day school devoted to the literature of the British fin-de-siècle (1880-1900). We will study three novels which reflect the dark and dangerous ideas of the times: Bram Stoker's Dracula, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The course will examine how the novels deal with late-Victorian anxieties about race and class, post-Darwinian fears of 'degeneration' of the species, and the illicit pleasures of breaking with conventions, social, sexual and moral.

Please read all three novels and bring a copy of each with you to class. The tutor will be using Oxford World’s Classics editions, and scholarly editions (eg. Norton, Oxford) are recommended, but any edition will do.