This intriguing book examines the ways contagion - or disease - inform and shape a wide variety of nineteenth century texts and contexts.
Christiensen dissects the cultural assumptions concerning disease, health, impurity and so on before exploring different perspectives on key themes such as plague, nursing and the hospital environment and focusing on certain key texts including Dicken's Bleak House, Gaskell's Ruth, and Zola's Le Docteur Pascal.

Allan Conrad Christensen is Professor of English at John Cabot University in Rome. He is the author of Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Fiction of New Regions (1976) and a book on the Italian Victorian novelist Giovanni Ruffini (1996).

Acknowledgements, Note on citations, 1. History as contagion, 2. Providence amidst pestilence and fire, 3. Swordsmen and needlewomen, 4. Physicians, nurses and patients, 5. Mothers, daughters and lovers, 6. Writers and readers, 7. Speakers, singers and listeners, Conclusion: money handlers and bookkeepers, Notes, Bibliography, Index