Literary Bric-à-Brac and the Victorians

Taking up the phenomenon of bric-à-brac in Victorian culture, this collection advances our understanding of materiality by examining the miscellaneous, moveable and rejected objects often overlooked in the discourses of thing theory. Essays examine writers as different as Lear, Browning, Balzac and Dickens to show how the things that make up Victorian literature can fall in and out of use, become undesignated and abject and evade the familiar categories of commodification.