Editor’s Note

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Editor’s Note Christopher Keep This issue’s forum explores the Victorian short story, a genre that has particularly strong roots in nineteenth-century print culture and one that has received a welcome reappraisal in recent years. The forum is guest edited by Victoria Margree (University of Brighton). The essays she has collected seek to develop new readings of some well-known stories and introduce lesser-known texts that are deserving of wider attention. Readers looking to enrich their understanding of this vital and increasingly important field of research and teachers looking for new texts to “change up” a syllabus will find much of interest in this engaging survey. The editorial committee is delighted to announce the recipients of the two prizes that our journal sponsors. The winning essay of the 2017 Hamilton Prize competition is “Subjective Realism and Diligent Imagination: G.H. Lewes’s Theory of Psychology and George Eliot’s Impressions of Theophrastus Such” by Scott Thompson (Temple University). We are pleased to publish this exceptional contribution to the field of Victorian studies in the current issue. The Hamilton Prize is awarded to the best essay submitted to our annual competition by a graduate student. Our grateful thanks go to the advisory board members who generously served as judges: Jason Camlot (Concordia), Amy Woodson-Boulton (Loyola Marymount), and Joan Greer (University of Alberta). The recipient of the 2017 Surridge Prize is Doreen Thierauf, for “Daniel Deronda, Marital Rape, and the End of Reproduction.” The essay appeared in the Fall 2017 issue of Victorian Review. In making this choice, the committee members were impressed by the ways in which the essay’s analysis compelled us to rethink Eliot’s complicated relationship with issues related to women and sexual violence, making this well-known novel seem rich and strange again. We were struck, too, by the deftness and suppleness of the argumentation, which moves the reader from the historical and legal frameworks for the adjudication of marital rape to scenes in the novel that are often overlooked. Thierauf ’s essay will be necessary reading for any future consideration of Eliot’s last published novel. The Surridge Prize, formerly the Editor’s Prize, is awarded annually to the best article published in the journal and is chosen by the members of the editorial committee: Karen Bourrier, Kristen Guest, Christopher Keep, Ryan Stephenson, and Vanessa Warne. This issue marks, too, the debut of our new book review editor. Ryan Stephenson (Douglas College) will be familiar to members of both the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada and the Victorian [End Page v] Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States. He was the co-convener of two very successful, recent conferences, the joint VSAWC-VISAWUS meeting in 2017 and the VSAWC conference in Vancouver in 2013. Ryan currently serves as president of VSAWC, so we are very fortunate, indeed, to have him lend his energy, enthusiasm, and expertise to this important position. [End Page vi] Copyright © 2019 Victorian Studies of Western Canada