Rebecca Richardson - Material Ambitions: Self-Help and Victorian Literature

Material Ambitions

Self-Help and Victorian Literature

REBECCA RICHARDSON

Johns Hopkins University Press

Baltimore

2021 Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Richardson, Rebecca, 1983 author.

Title: Material ambitions : self-help and Victorian literature / Rebecca Richardson.

Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021011251 | ISBN 9781421441962 (hardcover ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781421441979 (paperback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781421441986 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: English fiction19th centuryHistory and criticism. | Ambition in literature. | Self-actualization (Psychology) in literature. | Conduct of life in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism.

Classification: LCC PR468.S43 R53 2021 | DDC 820.9/353dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021011251

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

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It seems appropriate to begin in the same way that so many self-help narratives dowith a moment of inspiration. Mine came while reading Samuel Smiless Self-Help, with its overflowing examples of men who persevere despite setbacks, failures, and povertywhether that means sleeping only four hours a night, or working two jobs, or, in one memorable case, copying Newtons Principia by hand. We know how these stories end, but theres still some allure to reading the familiar trajectory from rags to richesor if not riches, at least, in Victorian terms, respectability. They reassure us that hard work pays off, that merit is rewarded, and that those who are successful earned it. Of course, despite the popularity of such stories in the nineteenth century and our own, we dont live in a meritocracy. Spending too much time with Victorian self-help textswhich preach that you should work hard, and, when you reach an obstacle, you should just work even hardercould be disastrous. Especially so in the context of Silicon Valley during the years when an entire generation was attempting to establish themselves in an economy that never recovered from the 2008 financial crisis (and then, of course, the pandemic hit).

But I was fortunate to have circles of friends, colleagues, and mentors who provided a counternarrative to that story of the bootstrapping individual. In its place, they modeled an expansive and generous intellectual community. And so the story of this book is not the story of a lone individual writing in a garret (although the size of my apartment might sometimes make it feel that way). I have many people, organizations, and institutions to thank for their support and collaboration. The project began as a dissertation advised by Denise Gigante, Franco Moretti, and Alex Woloch, who always offered wise counsel and pointed me to more promising paths. I have also deeply benefited from the conversations and friendships that started in those years, and especially with Irena Yamboliev, Meredith Castile, Sarah Allison, Stephen Osadetz, Kenny Ligda, Natalie Phillips, Amir Tevel, Ben Wiebracht, Lindsey D. Felt, Abigail Droge, and Justin Tackett. Friends, colleagues, and students in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric and the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking at Stanford have further taught me how deeply the work of writing, researching, and communicating depends on community. My students have been in the work of these revisions with me even when they didnt know it. Their willingness to always revise is an inspiration. To my writing group turned family, the Round TableJillian Hess, Hannah Doherty Hudson, Bronwen Tate, and Bridget Wheartywho read and discussed so many drafts from the dissertation prospectus to the book chapters to these acknowledgments, I want to express my deepest friendship and thanks.

I have also benefited from far-flung intellectual communities, presenting work in progress at meetings of the Wordsworth Summer Conference, the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, British Women Writers, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, the North American Victorian Studies Association, the Nineteenth Century Studies Association, the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies, and Dickens Universe. I was especially lucky to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar led by the wonderful Sharon Aronofsky Weltman, where I was fortunate to have Kirsten Andersen, Taryn Hakala, and Carrie Sickmann for roommates. Looking back, I am struck by how many serendipitous conversations have shaped this project in important ways, from a seminar at Dickens Universethanks especially to Tabitha Sparks, Jason Rudy, and Jessica Valdezto one of the many lively discussions at the Wordsworth Summer Conference with Richard Lansdown, to whom I am indebted for his feedback and for his notes on unpublished material by Miles Franklinespecially as circumstances prevented me from taking a much-anticipated trip to Australia to see them for myself.

This project took its final shape with Johns Hopkins University Press. I am grateful to the anonymous readers, who inspired me to further develop so many of the ideas in this final version, and to Catherine Goldstead, who always illuminated the path to get there. I also owe many thanks to Carrie Watterson for her brilliant copyediting and to the entire team that made this book a real, material thing in the world. After such thoughtful and careful feedback and collaboration, any errors are my own.

A key moment in the development of this project was writing what is now Review as A Competitive World: Ambition and Self-Help in Trollopes An Autobiography and The Three Clerks, the winner of the 2012 Trollope Prize. My thanks to the committee for their thoughtful feedback and to Denis Boyles and the Fortnightly Review for permission to reprint this material in its current form.

Financial and institutional support has made possible the space and time to complete this project. I want to thank the Stanford Department of English, the Stanford Humanities Center and Mellon Foundation, the Tom Killefer Dissertation Fellowship Fund, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I am also grateful for the Research Awards in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford, which allowed such things as a trip to access materials held at the British Library, the Armitt Museum and Library, the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham, and the London School of Economics Womens Library. That I have been able to write about these textsparticularly those Victorian self-help texts that have been preserved and digitized despite how rarely they are checked outis thanks to the work of librarians, archivists, and staff near and far. I am also especially grateful to everyone at Stanford Libraries and HathiTrust Digital Library who made it possible to complete this projectand to double-check so many footnotes and citationsduring a pandemic.