Nancy Henry is Professor of English at the University of Tennessee. She is author of George Eliot and the British Empire and The Cambridge Introduction to George Eliot, and is co-editor of a 2002 special issue of Victorian Studies. Cannon Schmitt is Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto. He is author of Alien Nation: Nineteenth-Century Gothic Fictions and English Nationality.

• ContentsIntroduction: Finance, Capital, CultureNancy Henry and Cannon SchmittPart 1. A Prehistory of Victorian Investment1. "Signum Rememorativum, Demonstrativum, Prognostikon": Finance Capital, the Atlantic, and SlaveryIan BaucomPart 2. Cultures of Investment2. Writing about Finance in Victorian England: Disclosure and Secrecy in the Culture of InvestmentMary Poovey3. The First Fund Managers: Life Insurance Bonuses in Victorian BritainTimothy Alborn4. Limited Liability, Market Democracy, and the Social Organization of Production in Mid-Nineteenth-Century BritainDonna Loftus5. Fair Enterprise or Extravagant Speculation: Investment, Speculation, and Gambling in Victorian EnglandDavid C. Itzkowitz6. Ladies of the Ticker: Women, Investment, and Fraud in England and America, 1850–1930George RobbPart 3. Fictions of Investment7. Trollope in the Stock Market: Irrational Exuberance and The Prime MinisterAudrey Jaffe8. "Rushing into Eternity": Suicide and Finance in Victorian FictionNancy Henry9. Rumor, Shares, and Novelistic Form: Joseph Conrad's NostromoCannon SchmittAfterwordMartin DauntonBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex

"This is a generous collection in every sense of the term, commendable for the breadth of its voices and for the wealth of information it offers both newcomers to and veterans of the study of Victorian finance. . . . Assembling contributions from top scholars in history and literature, Henry and Schmitt offer us a diverse and highly readable volume. Vol. 50, No. 3, July 2011"—Journal of British Studies"Serious, ample, and provocative, the essays are an important addition to the literature of nineteenth-century finance and offer constructive consideration of a fundamental feature of the practice and myths of capitalism as we continue to live with and in them. Vol. 52, No. 1"—Victorian Studies