Briony Wickes (KCL) - 2014-15 Students
briony.wickes@kcl.ac.uk

Fur, Feathers, Meat and Man: Animals, Anglo Trade and Global Expansion in Victorian Literature 1830-1880

My research examines the place of animals in Victorian expansionist culture through an interrogation of the literary forms, genres, and narratives that register and mediate nineteenth-century conceptions of nonhuman animals as commodities. Using global trade networks between Great Britain and the wider Anglophone world in 1840 -1900 as a historical framework to contextualise my research, the thesis will reread work by Victorian authors such as Herman Melville, R.M. Ballantyne, and Charles Dickens, alongside non-canonical texts which substantially engage with Victorian mercantile agendas, the global circulation of goods, and human-animal relations during this period.