One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2009 "An intelligent, thought-provoking contribution to the current critical discussion of economics and the novel, this volume examines the 19th-century proliferation of 'portable property'
i.e., objects that are endowed with sentimental value and function as reminders of Englishness abroad
and their elaboration in, and homology to, the realist Victorian novel... With this analysis, Plotz makes ... Read morea fascinating contribution to the history of the novel, economic literary theory, and postcolonial criticism."
D.K. Kreisel, Choice "Plotz ... offers a richly contextualized reading of the portability of value. As in his previous work, Plotz resists narrow ideological solutions to interpretive problems, and the complexity of his approach to Victorian culture pays off in extremely useful, often surprising readings."
Dianne F. Sadoff and John Kucich, Studies in English Literature "[T]his is a fine and subtle piece of work with something important to say about the ways in which particular kinds of 'English' culture were both constructed and perpetuated by the realist novel in the mid-Victorian period."
Clare Pettitt, Victorian Studies Show Less