This selection of eleven essays charts the most important aspects of the developing debate about Collins's fiction in the last twenty years. Employing a range of theoretical and methodological approaches - including reader response theory, narratology, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, cultural materialism and a range of feminisms - these essays examine Collins's fiction from several perspectives: historical, psychological, structural, generic and political (including gender politics). They focus on an author preoccupied with the production of social and psychological identity, and with issues of class, gender and power. If there is a single issue which permeates this collection, it is the question of the subversiveness of Collins's fiction or, alternatively, its retreat from and/or containment of a radical social critique or subversive impulses. The pros and cons of this debate are explored further in Lyn Pykett's detailed and wide-ranging introduction.

LYN PYKETT, Professor of English and currently Head of the Department of English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, is the author of numerous books and essays on nineteenth and twentieth century fiction and cultural history, including Emily Bronte (also published by Macmillan); The Improper Feminine; The New Woman Writing; The Sensation Novel from 'The Woman in White to The Moonstone; Engendering Fictions: The English Novel in the Early Twentieth Century. She has also edited a collection of essays on late turn-of-the-century writing, Reading Fin de Siecle Fictions.