Victorian Investments
New Perspectives on Finance and Culture

Nancy Henry (Edited by), Cannon Schmitt (Edited by)

9780253220271

Paperback / softback, published 26 November 2008

264 pages, 7 b&w illus.
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.4 cm, 0.372 kg

"This is a generous collection in every sense of the term, commendable for the breadth of its voices and for the wealth of information it offers both newcomers to and veterans of the study of Victorian finance. . . . Assembling contributions from top scholars in history and literature, Henry and Schmitt offer us a diverse and highly readable volume. Vol. 50, No. 3, July 2011"—Journal of British Studies
"Serious, ample, and provocative, the essays are an important addition to the literature of nineteenth-century finance and offer constructive consideration of a fundamental feature of the practice and myths of capitalism as we continue to live with and in them. Vol. 52, No. 1"—Victorian Studies

Victorian Investments explores the relationship between the financial system in Great Britain and other aspects of Victorian society and culture. Building on the special journal issue of Victorian Studies devoted to Victorian investments, this volume is the first to define an interdisciplinary field of study emerging in the space between Marxist critiques of capitalism and traditional histories of business and economics. The contributors demonstrate how phenomena such as the expansion of colonial and foreign markets, the broadening of the investor base through the advent of limited liability, and the rise of financial journalism gave rise to a "culture of investment" that affected Victorian Britons at every level of society and influenced every kind of cultural production. Drawing together work by prominent historians as well as literary and cultural critics, Victorian Investments both defines the methodologies and perspectives that characterize an existing body of scholarship and pushes that scholarship in new directions, demonstrating the signal role of economic developments in Victorian culture and society.

Contents
Introduction: Finance, Capital, CultureNancy Henry and Cannon Schmitt
Part 1. A Prehistory of Victorian Investment
1. "Signum Rememorativum, Demonstrativum, Prognostikon": Finance Capital, the Atlantic, and SlaveryIan Baucom
Part 2. Cultures of Investment
2. Writing about Finance in Victorian England: Disclosure and Secrecy in the Culture of InvestmentMary Poovey
3. The First Fund Managers: Life Insurance Bonuses in Victorian BritainTimothy Alborn
4. Limited Liability, Market Democracy, and the Social Organization of Production in Mid-Nineteenth-Century BritainDonna Loftus
5. Fair Enterprise or Extravagant Speculation: Investment, Speculation, and Gambling in Victorian EnglandDavid C. Itzkowitz
6. Ladies of the Ticker: Women, Investment, and Fraud in England and America, 1850–1930George Robb
Part 3. Fictions of Investment
7. Trollope in the Stock Market: Irrational Exuberance and The Prime MinisterAudrey Jaffe
8. "Rushing into Eternity": Suicide and Finance in Victorian FictionNancy Henry
9. Rumor, Shares, and Novelistic Form: Joseph Conrad's NostromoCannon Schmitt
AfterwordMartin Daunton
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index