Class in Turn-of-the-Century Novels of Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells

This book argues that, due to political and ideological shifts in the last decades of the nineteenth century-a time when the class system in England was in a state of flux-a new depiction of social class was possible in the English novel. Late-century writers such as Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells question the middle-class Victorian views of class that had dominated the novel for decades. By disrupting traditional novelistic conventions, these writers reveal the ideology of the historical momen