Review of John Halperin, Egoism and Self-Discovery in the Victorian Novel: Studies in the Ordeal of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century (1975), and Jerome H. Buckley, Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding (1974)

Abstract

Critical of Halperin’s attempt to explain how novelists’ preoccupation with the self influenced most of their works; believes Halperin oversimplifies his argument. By contrast, Buckley offers sensible observations on the novelists he chooses to discuss.