In this manuscript, Lauren Goodlad looks at Victorian literature as the means for a post-Foucauldian study of Victorian culture, arguing that Victorian Britain was a liberal society. She explores diverse works of Victorian literature as they converged with major developments in the modernization of the British state. In so doing, she relays literature's relation to developments that have long occupied social historians including poor law, sanitary, educational, and civil service reforms, and the substitution of organized charity for the state. Each chapter takes up a contentious aspect of the Victorian state, linking debates over governance to major works by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, John Stuart Mills, and others.

Goodlad shifts the paradigm for studying Victorian society from the... early Foucault... A welcome intervention into new historicist critical practices. -- David G. Riede Victorian Poetry 2004 One of the most important contributions to the study of the Victorian novel to appear thus far in the twenty-first century. -- Nicholas Birns Studies in the Novel 2006 Lauren Goodlad seems poised to take her place among the most incisive and respected critics of Victorian literature and culture... Goodlad's study is erudite in its detailed accounts of period literatures and contexts and rigorously fair-minded in its approach to the past. -- Grace Kehler H-Net Reviews 2007 Meticulous and illuminating book. -- Zarena Aslami Modern Philology 2005 With this welcome study, Goodlad extends and revises post-Foucauldian theories of state power and governance in 19th-century England... It will undoubtedly spark much productive debate among scholars of the Victorian period. Choice 2004 Lauren Goodlad's excellent book examines the New Poor Law, sanitary reform, and civil service reform within their political and literary contexts, particularly that provided by Victorian liberalism, a philosophy that holds that the best government is that which governs least. -- George P. Landow Victorian Web 2005 Goodlad finds a tension at the heart of Victorian liberal society between the highly influential discourse of independence and self-help and an emergent discourse of state and civic responsibility... Victorian Literature and the Victorian State consists of fine-grained, historicist analysis of the key social debates that showcased this tension, accompanied by solid readings of pertinent novels... Goodlad accomplishes the worthy goal she sets herself: to offer an understanding of liberalism that is at once 'rigorous and expansive.' -- Jennifer Ruth Victorian Studies 2004 This study offers frequently persuasive readings of literary texts in relation to Victorian attempts to reform poor relief, the civil service, sanitation, and education... It does an effective job of balancing literature and history so that detailed discussions of phenomena from those different realms cast light on each other. -- Janice Carlisle Dickens Quarterly 2004

Lauren M. E. Goodlad is an associate professor of English at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.