Metaphors of Economic Exploitation in Literature, 1885-1914: Vampiric Enterprise

Metaphors of Economic Exploitation in Literature, 1885-1914 explores the complex network of metaphors that emerged around late nineteenth-century conceptions of economic self-interest - metaphors that dramatised the predatory, conflictual, and exploitative basis of relations between nations, institutions, sexes, and people in a fin-de-siècle economy that was perceived by many as outwardly belligerent. More specifically, this book is about the vampire, cannibal, and related genera of economic metaphor that penetrate the major discourses of the period in ways that have yet to be understood. In chapters that examine socialist fiction and newspapers; the imperial quest romance; the decadent and supernatural tales of Henry James and Vernon Lee; and the Catholic novels of Lucas Malet, Ford assesses the breadth and variety of these metaphors, and considers how they filter the long-standing philosophical ideas about self-interest and the conflictual ’economic man’. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars of fin-de-siècle literature and culture as well as those with an interest in the relationship between literature, economics, and anti-capitalist movements.

Jane Ford is a Senior Lecturer in English Studies at Teesside University, UK. She is a specialist in fin-de-siècle literature and culture, particularly women’s writing, the Gothic and economic themes and metaphors. She has published essays on a range of nineteenth-century writers, including Mona Caird, Olive Schreiner, Vernon Lee, Lucas Malet and Bertram Mitford. She is co-editor of two collections of essays: Economies of Desire at the Victorian Fin de Siècle: Libidinal Lives (Routledge 2016) and Lucas Malet, Dissident Pilgrim: Critical Essays (Routledge 2020).