Literary Illumination

Richard Leahy is Lecturer in English at the University of Chester, and his research interests include the nineteenth century, technology and literature, and techniques of illumination.

• Introduction Chapter One: Firelight 1.1 Nineteenth Century Firelight: Hearth, Home and Industry 1.2 Gaskell, Dickens, Fire and Reverie1.3 Variable Flames in Urban Domesticity1.4 Fire and Reverie in Industrial Desperation Chapter Two: Candlelight 2.1 A Brief History of Candlelight 2.2. Candle Theory and its Symbolic Value in Literature 2.3 The Candle and the Literary Detective 2.4 The Candle and the Gothic Unknown 2.5 The Candle and Ambiguity of Mental States Chapter Three: Gaslight 3.1 Gaslight in the Nineteenth Century 3.2 The Networked City: Gaslight on Literary Streets 3.3 The Theatre: Gaslight’s Stage 3.4 The Department Store: Gaslight’s Dressing Room Chapter Four: Electric Light 4.1 Electric Light in the Nineteenth Century 4.2 Jules Verne’s prophetic electric light of the 1860s and 70s 4.3 The Transient Light of H.G. Wells’s Fin-de-Siècle 4.4 Electric Light 1900-1914: Realisation and Realism Summary and Conclusions