Working Fictions

“[A]n ambitious rereading of the labour politics of nineteenth-century literature. . . . [R]efreshing, nuanced, and arresting.” - Gaskell Journal

“[Lesjak] has without doubt developed sophisticated analytical instruments for making the labor/pleasure problematic visible in a wide range of Victorian fiction, and her book will certainly reinvigorate scholarly attention to this tremendously important topic.” - John Kucich, Victorian Studies

“[Lesjak] offers careful, convincing readings of how capitalist labor practices are always already structuring presentations of pleasure, thus providing a new, incisive view of how Victorian novels capture the realities of the working class . . . . Lesjak presents a genealogy that is not only exhaustive and assorted but also vital to current conversations that reconceptualize the genre and methodology of realism.” - S. Mahato, Choice

“Lesjak’s clear and sophisticated style makes the work accessible across a wide audience to produce a significant contribution to nineteenth-century literary analysis.” - Jessica Webb, Rocky Mountain Review

“One of Lesjak’s aces . . . is that there is no disappearance of labor at the end of the industrial novel. . . . One of her finest analyses is of Great Expectations. . . . Lesjak works hard to convince us that Marx and Morris are not romantics but prophets who have seen the future. I hope she is right.” - Leila S. May, Victorians Institute Journal

"[A] valuable re-evaluation of the importance of the 'labour novel' and makes some genuinely convincing and interesting new connections between traditional texts." - Gemma Gaskell, Modern Language Review

"While Lesjak's readings include some familiar elements, they also make new and important connections between narrative and global economics, generating a suggestive rethinking of the relation between social change and the formal and generic problems of Victorian realism." - Cathy Shuman, Novel

“Working Fictions compellingly reconfigures the literary history of the nineteenth century by exploring the complex ways in which concepts of labor and pleasure informed the realist novel and Victorian aestheticism. This is a rich renewal of Frankfurt School concerns and a powerful contribution to contemporary literary studies.” - Amanda Anderson, author of The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory

“Working Fictions is a groundbreaking book on Victorian literature and culture. Carolyn Lesjak reads nineteenth-century novels together with the best of social historical and Marxist criticism to reveal how the novel separated labor from pleasure and, in doing so, changed the very definition of both. Hers is an argument whose time has come, one that will enable a new generation of work to be done.” - Nancy Armstrong, author of Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel