This collection of essays by established critics and scholars attempts to offer explorations of fresh facets, public and private of the art of the major Victorian novelists, in many cases supported by extended close readings of their novels. There are four studies of novels by Dickens, and studies of novels by Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Trollope and Kipling are also provided. Colin Gibson is author of "The Interpretative Power" and he has written articles and essays on Renaissance drama and poetry and modern poetry and hymnology.