BEYOND THE NATION: PENNY FICTION, THE CRIMEAN WAR, AND POLITICAL BELONGING
Journal: Victorian Literature and Culture
Year: 2018

“The nation state . . . found the novel. And vice versa: the novel found the nation-state” (Moretti 17). Franco Moretti's famous formulation has proved as partial as it is influential, challenged by a growing body of transnational scholarship. It is challenged as well by a different set of novels from the canonical ones Moretti has in mind: working-class penny fiction. Given the inequities of society, it is not surprising that this literature expresses a more complicated relationship to England.