Victorian Fantasy

Book excerpt: Far from being just children's literature, Victorian fantasyis an art form that flourished in opposition to the repressive social and intellectual conditions of "Victorianism." In this fully revised and expanded edition, Stephen Prickett explores the way in which Victorian writers used nonrealistic techniques - nonsense, dreams, visions, and the creation of other worlds - to extend our understanding of this world. In particular, Prickett focuses on six writers (Lear, Carroll, Kingsley, MacDonald, Kipling, and Nesbit), tracing the development of their art form, their influence on each other, and how these writers used fantasy to question the ideology of Victorian culture and society.