Gordon Bigelow is Assistant Professor of English at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. His work has appeared in the journals ELH and New Orleans Review and in the volume Reclaiming Gender: Transgressive Identities in 19th-century Ireland (1999).

"...a clearly argued work which brings the industrial novels of Dickens and Gaskell into dialogue with contemporary theories of political economy. The value of Bigelow's book lies primarily in his demonstration of his thesis through a meticulous examination of the language of economic theorists." Kate Flint, Studies in English Literature

• Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Origin Stories and Political Economy, 1740–1870: 1. History as abstraction; 2. Value as signification; Part II. Producing the Consumer: 3. Market indicators: banking and housekeeping in Bleak House; 4. Esoteric solutions: Ireland and the colonial critique of political economy; 5. Toward a social theory of wealth: three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Gordon Bigelow is Assistant Professor of English at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. His work has appeared in the journals ELH and New Orleans Review and in the volume Reclaiming Gender: Transgressive Identities in 19th-century Ireland (1999).

"...a clearly argued work which brings the industrial novels of Dickens and Gaskell into dialogue with contemporary theories of political economy. The value of Bigelow's book lies primarily in his demonstration of his thesis through a meticulous examination of the language of economic theorists." Kate Flint, Studies in English Literature

• Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Origin Stories and Political Economy, 1740–1870: 1. History as abstraction; 2. Value as signification; Part II. Producing the Consumer: 3. Market indicators: banking and housekeeping in Bleak House; 4. Esoteric solutions: Ireland and the colonial critique of political economy; 5. Toward a social theory of wealth: three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Gordon Bigelow is Assistant Professor of English at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. His work has appeared in the journals ELH and New Orleans Review and in the volume Reclaiming Gender: Transgressive Identities in 19th-century Ireland (1999).

"...a clearly argued work which brings the industrial novels of Dickens and Gaskell into dialogue with contemporary theories of political economy. The value of Bigelow's book lies primarily in his demonstration of his thesis through a meticulous examination of the language of economic theorists." Kate Flint, Studies in English Literature

• Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Origin Stories and Political Economy, 1740–1870: 1. History as abstraction; 2. Value as signification; Part II. Producing the Consumer: 3. Market indicators: banking and housekeeping in Bleak House; 4. Esoteric solutions: Ireland and the colonial critique of political economy; 5. Toward a social theory of wealth: three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.