Neo-Victorian Young Adult Narratives

Neo-Victorian Young Adult Narratives examines the neo-Victorian themes and motifs currently appearing in young adult fiction—specifically addressing the themes of authorship, sexuality, and criminality in the context of the Victorian age in British and American cultures. This book explicates the complicated relationship between the Victorian past and the turn to Victorian modes of thought on literature, history, and morality. Additionally, Sarah E. Maier aims to determine if the appeal of neo-Victorian young adult fiction rests in or resists nostalgia, parody, and revision. Given the overwhelming prevalence of the Victorian in the young adult genres of biofiction, juvenile writings, gothic, sensation, mystery, and crime fiction, there is much to investigate in terms of the friction between the past and the present.

 

"Neo-Victorian Young Adult Narratives by Sarah E. Maier is a timely and insightful analysis of a diverse range of stories set in the long nineteenth century but written by authors with modern knowledge and understanding that reimagine Victorianism for contemporary consumption. This body of literature offers perspectives that are having multifaceted impact—both healthy and unhealthy—on teens. Its most positive contribution is, as Maier puts it, “the disavowal and unmasking of society as a means of entrapment [that] is outed as such and tragic outcomes for non-conformists [that] are exposed, delayed, or overturned in the new texts.” Maier is interested in the effect this expanding book market has on the development of values and character of adolescent readers as she investigates the ways in which it helps and hinders teenage navigation through today’s social minefields, and in turn, induces cultural change." (Dr. Brenda Ayres, Prolific Literary Critic of  Victorianism and neo-Victorianism)



"In this engaging work, Sarah E. Maier foregrounds an exciting strand of the Neo-Victorian novel. Neo-Victorian Young Adult Narratives draws attention to the ways in which such works offer young adults imaginative encounters with the nineteenth century and the fictional and historical characters of the period who remain culturally resonant, while also introducing them, through neo-Victorianism’s revisionist agenda, to social, political and personal conflicts that speak to their own developing experience. Encompassing the neo-Gothic, and ranging from texts that encompass re-imaginings of Mary Shelley and the Brontës; Sherlock Holmes’ challenging teen sister and other unexpected offspring; to novels that reflect the shared complexities of Victorian and contemporary debates on gender and sexuality, this volume promises to be an invaluable contribution not only to Young Adult scholarship but to neo-VictorianStudies more broadly, enriching our understanding of the interplay between the past and present in young adult narratives." (Professor Patricia Pulham, Head of School, School of Literature and Languages, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford)    

        

Neo-Victorian Young Adult Narratives is an astonishing work of criticism that will have wide appeal to students and scholars of Victorian Studies and Neo-Victorian Literature, as well as young adult fiction studies more broadly. Maier’s prose is clear and compelling to read, while intellectually complex and original. For this reason, Neo-Victorian Young Adult Narrative could easily serve as a textbook in both undergraduate courses (even my first-year horror, sci-fi, fantasy course), as well as graduate courses on Young Adult & Children’s literature and/or “Neo-“ interventions into of the field Victorian Studies. I am especially impressed with the clarity with which Maier lays out definitions of key critical concepts, and then develops these terms through engaging textual analysis (providing a roadmap for future lesson plans or scholarly conversations to be continued); and while some terms will might be familiar to students and scholars (Young Adult vs Children’s literature, the bildungsroman, sensation and detective fiction), Maier offers terms (like biofiction) or critical approaches (like disability studies and mad studies) to complicate and nuance our understanding of these traditional literary devices and/or narrative forms. Best of all, this is a study that takes Young Adult literature seriously; in her analysis, Maier models respect for young peoples’ voices and literary tastes and shows how young adults’ issues and themes are relevant to literary criticism more broadly. As Maier shows, young adults see themselves as critically engaged in cultural discussions of race andcolonialism, gender and sexuality (including their own embodied identities & desires), as well as our current global environmental crisis. " (S. Brooke Cameron , Associate Professor of English, Queen's University)

Sarah E. Maier is Professor of English & Comparative Literature at the University of New Brunswick. Her recent publications include work on Ann Lister, the Brontës, neo-Victorian vampires, neo-Victorian Alienists, Maleficent, neo-Gothicism, and Queer Mash-ups. Maier has written A Vindication of the Redhead (2021 Palgrave) with Brenda Ayres, and they have co-edited The Palgrave Handbook of Neo-Victorianism (2023 Palgrave), Neo-Victorian Things (2022 Palgrave), Neo-Disneyism (2022 Lang), The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture (2022 Routledge), The Theological Dickens (2022 Routledge),  Neo-Victorian Madness (2020 Palgrave), Neo-Gothic Narratives: (2020 Anthem), Animals and Their Children in Victorian Culture (2019 Routledge), and Reinventing Marie Corelli (2019 Anthem).