Victorian literary culture and ancient Egypt

This edited collection considers representations of ancient Egypt in the literature of the nineteenth-century. It addresses themes such as reanimated mummies, ancient Egyptian mythology and contemporary consumer culture across literary modes ranging from burlesque satire to historical novels, stage performances to Gothic fiction and popular culture to the highbrow. The book illuminates unknown sources of historical significance including the first illustration of an ambulatory mummy revising current understandings of the works of canonical writers and grounding its analysis firmly in a contemporary context. The contributors demonstrate the extensive range of cultural interest in ancient Egypt that flourished during Victorias reign. At the same time, they use ancient Egypt to interrogate selfhood and otherness, notions of race, imperialism, religion, gender and sexuality.

Eleanor Dobson is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Birmingham

Introduction Eleanor Dobson1 Allamistakeo awakes: the earliest image of an ambulatory mummy Jasmine Day2Adam Bede: an ancient Egyptian book of Genesis Haythem Bastawy3 Remembering Mrs Potiphar: Victorian reclamations of a biblical temptress Angie Blumberg4 Prefiguring the cross: a typological reading of H. Rider HaggardsCleopatra Sara Woodward5 The culminating flower of cat-worship in Egypt: nineteenth-century stage Cleopatras and Victorian views of ancient Egypt Molly Youngkin6 A Memnon waiting for the day: ancient Egypt in aestheticism and decadence Giles Whiteley7 Perfume, cigarettes and gilded boards:Pharos the Egyptian and consumer culture Eleanor Dobson8 The intelligibility of the past in Bram StokersThe Jewel of Seven Stars Luz Elena RamirezIndex