Novel Institutions : Anachronism, Irish Novels and Nineteenth-Century Realism Hardback

Explores the politics of nineteenth-century British realism Winner of the 2019 Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on LiteratureOffers a new theory of institutions grounded in temporalityOutlines a transnational theory of British realism that emerges from interpreting Irish realist novelsReassesses the politics of realism and the politics of institutionsContains close-reading of realist novels as well as a new genealogy of British realismAdvances a new understanding of the relationship between realism and colonialism This book examines anachronisms in realist writing from the colonial periphery to redefine British realism and rethink the politics of institutions.

Paying unprecedented attention to nineteenth-century Irish novels, it demonstrates how institutions constrain social relationships in the present and limit our sense of political possibilities in the future.

It argues that we cannot escape institutions, but we can refuse the narrow political future that they work to secure.