Convalescence in the Nineteenth-Century Novel

Hosanna Krienke currently teaches at the University of Wyoming. She authored this text during her time as a post-doctoral researcher for the ERC-funded project 'Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives' at the University of Oxford. Her work has appeared in Victorian Review, Victorian Literature and Culture, and the medical humanities blog Nursing Clio.

• 1. Convalescence and the Working-Class: Convalescent Homes, Illness Outcomes, and Charles Dickens's Bleak House; 2. Spiritual Convalescence: Reading Against the Deathbed in Convalescent Devotionals and Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth; 3. Novel-Reading as Convalescence: Gender and Leisure in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone; 4. Convalescence and Mental Illness: Recuperability in Insane Asylums, the After-Care Association, and Samuel Butler's Erewhon; 5. Imperial Convalescence: Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, Convalescent Depots, and the Birth of Rehabilitation Medicine.

'Krienke writes for academic readers, and will doubtless inspire literary scholars to try out her approach on other Victorian novels-many of which seem to call for it. Her valuable research will also be of interest to Victorianists in general, and especially those interested in gender, class, medical and colonial history.' Jacqueline Banerjee, Times Literary Supplement