Street Urchins, Sociopaths and Degenerates

From the notable emergence of orphan figures in late eighteenth-century literature, through early- and middle-period Victorian fiction and, as this book argues, well into the fin de siecle, this potent literary type is remarkable for its consistent recurrence and its metamorphosis as a register of cultural conditions. The striking ubiquity of orphans in the literature of these periods encourages inquiry into their metaphoric implications and the manner in which they function as barometers of bur