Maxwell Gray, The Silence of Dean Maitland

Mary Gleed Tuttiett, better known by the pen name Maxwell Gray, was an English novelist and poet best known for her 1886 novel The Silence of Dean Maitland. Julian Wolfeys is Professor of English Literature at the University of Portsmouth, where he is also Director of the Centre for Studies in Literature. He is author and editor of more than 40 books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century English literature and literary theory. Most recently he has published Dickens’s London and The Derrida Wordbook, both with Edinburgh University Press. He recently published his first novel, Silent Music.

• IntroductionAcknowledgements and a note on the textThe Silence of Dean MaitlandAppendices1. An Interview with Maxwell Gray, by Catherine Jane Hamilton, from The Woman at Home, 1895 (facsimile)2. Period Map of the Isle of Wight c.19143. Frontispiece illustration from the fifth edition of the novel4. "Shooting" a Scene. For an Australian Talkie. Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 7 December, 1933 (facsimile)5. Reviews of and Commentary on The Silence of Dean Maitland, with commentary on and reviews of the Australian film versions (1914, 1934) of the novel, and related material 1886-19916. Poster for 1934 film of The Silence of Dean Maitland

The Silence of Dean Maitland, a very little known text from the mid-Victorian period, offers us a glimpse of the concerns of the period – the problem of crime and its detection and punishment; questions of conscience and behaviour in the post-Darwinian world – all set amongst a panorama of characters in rural mid-century Britain. In this novel, Mrs Henry Wood meets Mrs Humphry Ward and they both nod politely towards the world of Thomas Hardy. Wolfreys’ edition of this text gives us comprehensive notes to aid the reader’s understanding and a brilliant selection of contemporary commentary on the issues the novel raises. It gives us the chance to broaden our canon of Victorian fiction into realms that are resolutely not part of the old ‘Great Tradition’.