Gossip and Subversion in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

Jan Gordon proposes that a reviled communicational ''interest'' in gossip and its purveyors be given its proper due in the development of the novel in Britain. Commencing with Sir Walter Scott''s historically persecuted (but economically and politically necessary) androgynous voices in caves and concluding with Oscar Wilde''s premature celebration of gossip at the very moment it is transformed fro...