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.

• IntroductionChapter One: Firelight1.1 Nineteenth Century Firelight: Hearth, Home and Industry1.2 Gaskell, Dickens, Fire and Reverie1.3 Variable Flames in Urban Domesticity1.4 Fire and Reverie in Industrial DesperationChapter Two: Candlelight2.1 A Brief History of Candlelight2.2. Candle Theory and its Symbolic Value in Literature2.3 The Candle and the Literary Detective2.4 The Candle and the Gothic Unknown2.5 The Candle and Ambiguity of Mental StatesChapter Three: Gaslight3.1 Gaslight in the Nineteenth Century3.2 The Networked City: Gaslight on Literary Streets3.3 The Theatre: Gaslight’s Stage3.4 The Department Store: Gaslight’s Dressing RoomChapter Four: Electric Light4.1 Electric Light in the Nineteenth Century4.2 Jules Verne’s prophetic electric light of the 1860s and 70s4.3 The Transient Light of H.G. Wells’s Fin-de-Siècle4.4 Electric Light 1900-1914: Realisation and RealismSummary and Conclusions