Dante Beyond Influence: Rethinking Reception in Victorian Literary Culture

Description: Unearthing previously unseen manuscript and print evidence, the book redefines the notion of Dante's reception by conducting the first material and book-historical inquiry into the formation and popularisation of the the critical and scholarly discourse on Dante in Victorian culture.

Review Quotes:

'This innovative and absorbing book has much to say about the dedication with which Victorian intellectuals approached Dante and shared their knowledge in private and public contexts. It offers a very valuable model for archival research into the development of Victorian popular and scholarly cultures.'
Victorian Studies

'Dante Beyond Influence breaks genuinely new ground by going well beyond the realm of creative appropriation into the wider dimension of interpretive criticism and academic scholarship. Its tightly focused archival research supports a number of the study's key concerns. The development of networks of Dante reception is one of the many suggestive topics explored, as is the reading, scholarly and divulgative work of previously underrated Victorian women dantiste.'
Nicholas Havely, University of York

'This innovative and absorbing book has much to say about the dedication with which Victorian intellectuals approached Dante and shared their knowledge in private and public contexts. It offers a very valuable model for archival research into the development of Victorian popular and scholarly cultures.'
Isobel Hurst, University of London

'A seminal book for studies of the modern reception of Dante, standing out in the great landscape of the centennial publications for methodological accuracy, breadth of interest, and narrative and structural coherence. In other words, it is a genuinely indispensable book that cannot be missed in the library of Dante scholars and literary reception specialists.'
Natale Vacalebre, Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies

'Dante beyond Influence opens new perspectives on how nineteenth-century Britons responded to Dante and how diverse audiences for his work were developed through particular engagement with the materiality and technology of Dante study [...] taking us beyond the aristocratic manuscript collection of the eighteenth century to Dante study for the populace.'
Alison Milbank, Speculum