Hilary M. Schor is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies and Law at the University of Southern California, where she codirects the USC Center for Law, History and Culture. She is the author of Dickens and the Daughter of the House and Scheherezade in the Marketplace: Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Novel.

"A dazzling, funny, and overwhelmingly insightful exploration on a fundamental theme that of female curiosity which pervades realist fiction as well as life more generally." -- Slate

"Erudite, witty and lucid, Schor's study charms and informs in equal measure." -- Times Higher Education

"What might seem a straightforward claim becomes an interpretive curiosity cabinet, a rich collection of ideas and objects that intersect in unexpected, enlightening ways. To explore the story of the realist heroine and her transgressive curiosity Schor examines the realist novel, the Victorian social and intellectual context that fertilized it, the concept of curiosity, and the cultural role of fiction, past and future while producing compelling readings of a multitude of Victorian novels, including Clarissa, Alice in Wonderland, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Vanity Fair, Bleak House, The Old Curiosity Shop, and The Portrait of a Lady, alongside contemporary fictions, graphic novels, and films." -- Studies in the Novel

"One of the book's great pleasures is the familiarity of the terrain: those of us who teach these texts will feel how easily Schor's ideas could find hold in the classroom. But the argument also follows a wider arc, laying claim to the continuing relevance of the Victorian novel, as she traces the genealogy of the form from foundational tales of female curiosity to modern reinterpretations by novelists including Kate Atkinson, Margaret Atwood, and Kazuo Ishiguro." -- Victorian Studies

"A beautifully written and accessible study... Highly recommended." --CHOICE