Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-244) and index.
Contents:
Placing and Displacing Ambition: Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career and My Career Goes Bung. 6. Forming the Ambitious Individual in Samuel Smiley's Self-Help -- 2. Expanding the Story of Ambition, Work, and Health in a Limited World: Harriet Martina's Economic and Illness Writing -- 3. Enabling the Self-Help Narrative in Dinah Craig's John Halifax, Gentleman -- 4. "At What Point This Ambition Transgresses the Boundary of Virtue": From Thackeray's Barry Lyndon to Vanity Fair -- 5. Individuating Ambitions in a Competitive System: Trollope's Autobiography and The Three Clerks -- 6. Placing and Displacing Ambition: Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career and My Career Goes Bung.
Summary:
"The book traces the early history of the self-help genre and the literary depiction of ambition in Victorian British fiction. Stories of hardworking characters who bring themselves out of rags to riches abound in the Victorian era. In chapters featuring the works of novelists, the author demonstrates that Victorian fiction dramatized ambition and it as well"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.