PATRICK BRANTLINGER is professor of English and Victorian Studies at Indiana University. He served for ten years as editor of Victorian Studies and is author of The Spirit of Reform: British Literature and Politics, 1832-1867 (1977), Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay (1983), Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism (1988), and Fictions of State: Culture and Credit in Britain, 1694-1994 (1997).

"Timely, scrupulously researched, thoroughly enlightening, and steadily readable... Here is a book about readers that is genuinely for readers... Brantlinger catches once again the pulse of recent Victorian studies... A work of agenda-setting historical scholarship." Garrett Stewart, University of Iowa "[Brantlinger's] writing is admirably lucid, his knowledge impressive and his thesis a welcome reminder of the class bias that so often accompanies denunciations of popular fiction." Publishers Weekly

• Acknowledgments1. Introduction: The Case of the Poisonous Book2. Gothic Toxins: The Castle of Otranto, The Monk, and Caleb Williams3. The Reading Monster4. How Oliver Twist Learned to Read, and What He Found5. Poor Jack, Poor Jane: Representing the Working Class and Women in Early and Mid-Victorian Novels6. Cashing in on the Real in Thackeray and Trollope7. Novel Sensations of the 1860s8. The Educations of Edward Hyde and Edwin Reardon9. Overbooked versus Bookless Futures in Late-Victorian FictionNotesWorks CitedIndex

PATRICK BRANTLINGER is professor of English and Victorian Studies at Indiana University. He served for ten years as editor of Victorian Studies and is author of The Spirit of Reform: British Literature and Politics, 1832-1867 (1977), Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay (1983), Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism (1988), and Fictions of State: Culture and Credit in Britain, 1694-1994 (1997).

"Timely, scrupulously researched, thoroughly enlightening, and steadily readable... Here is a book about readers that is genuinely for readers... Brantlinger catches once again the pulse of recent Victorian studies... A work of agenda-setting historical scholarship." Garrett Stewart, University of Iowa "[Brantlinger's] writing is admirably lucid, his knowledge impressive and his thesis a welcome reminder of the class bias that so often accompanies denunciations of popular fiction." Publishers Weekly

• Acknowledgments1. Introduction: The Case of the Poisonous Book2. Gothic Toxins: The Castle of Otranto, The Monk, and Caleb Williams3. The Reading Monster4. How Oliver Twist Learned to Read, and What He Found5. Poor Jack, Poor Jane: Representing the Working Class and Women in Early and Mid-Victorian Novels6. Cashing in on the Real in Thackeray and Trollope7. Novel Sensations of the 1860s8. The Educations of Edward Hyde and Edwin Reardon9. Overbooked versus Bookless Futures in Late-Victorian FictionNotesWorks CitedIndex

PATRICK BRANTLINGER is professor of English and Victorian Studies at Indiana University. He served for ten years as editor of Victorian Studies and is author of The Spirit of Reform: British Literature and Politics, 1832-1867 (1977), Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay (1983), Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism (1988), and Fictions of State: Culture and Credit in Britain, 1694-1994 (1997).

"Timely, scrupulously researched, thoroughly enlightening, and steadily readable... Here is a book about readers that is genuinely for readers... Brantlinger catches once again the pulse of recent Victorian studies... A work of agenda-setting historical scholarship." Garrett Stewart, University of Iowa "[Brantlinger's] writing is admirably lucid, his knowledge impressive and his thesis a welcome reminder of the class bias that so often accompanies denunciations of popular fiction." Publishers Weekly

• Acknowledgments1. Introduction: The Case of the Poisonous Book2. Gothic Toxins: The Castle of Otranto, The Monk, and Caleb Williams3. The Reading Monster4. How Oliver Twist Learned to Read, and What He Found5. Poor Jack, Poor Jane: Representing the Working Class and Women in Early and Mid-Victorian Novels6. Cashing in on the Real in Thackeray and Trollope7. Novel Sensations of the 1860s8. The Educations of Edward Hyde and Edwin Reardon9. Overbooked versus Bookless Futures in Late-Victorian FictionNotesWorks CitedIndex