Unearned Wealth: Inheritance in English Literature from 1800 to 2015 (working title) (PhD project)
Julie Hastrup-Markussen
“Goodness only knows what novelists and dramatists would do without wills.” - L.S. Lewis: “Some Peculiar Wills”, The Strand Magazine 14 (1897)
From the absurdities of the Court of Chancery in Charles Dickens Bleak House (1853) to the disgraceful insinuations in Edward Casaubon’s last will and testament in George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-72), inheritance plays a significant part in much literature from the 19th century. Inheritance is the perfect plot device that can instigate stories through its ability to change the destinies of those bequeathed or robbed of an inheritance. This PhD project looks at inherited wealth as an economic, social and cultural phenomenon with the aim of drawing a picture of inheritance between 1850 and 1930 with detours back in time from 1800 to 1850 and forward in time from 1930 to 2015. Methodologically, the project combines computational tools with traditional textual analysis.
