These thanks begin with a wince at the thought of omitting many people whose kindness and acumen palpably shape this book (“Think where man’s glory most begins and ends / And say my glory was I had such friends”). No choice but to press on, regardless: Steve Biel, Alex Ross, and Phil Joseph (who got caught in a hailstorm with me on the way to Red Cloud, Nebraska) helped me understand Cather. The chapter on short fiction would be inconceivable without Penny Fielding’s collegiality, counsel, and camaraderie, and Jonathan Grossman’s Dickensian wit and wisdom. My ideas about Mill and Victorian liberalism owe much to Elaine Hadley, Rachel Ablow, Deborah Cohen, Elaine Freedgood, and Mary Jean Corbett. For tutelage and counsel on all things Victorian, I thank Elaine Scarry, Philip Fisher, Anna Henchman, Deb Gettelman, Nick Dames, Rae Greiner, Ian Duncan, Catherine Gallagher, and the two splendid Victorianist groups in Boston, generously overseen by Martha Vicinus, Laura Green, and Kelly Hager. Jed Esty and Sarah Cole shared their thoughts on Wells, science fiction, and much more; Andrew Miller and Sharon Marcus did the same when it came to Buster Keaton. In correspondence and highly delightful conversation on art history topics ranging from Millais to Alma-Tadema to William Morris, Beth Helsinger, Tim Barringer, Jennifer Roberts, Kate Flint, and Pamela Fletcher have been kindness personified. For research on Morris and in other archival forays, I am particularly indebted to Elizabeth Miller and Florence Boos, and to Anne Woodrum and Sarah Shoemaker at Brandeis, and the thoughtful staff at Harvard’s Widener and Houghton Libraries. At Princeton, Anne Savarese and her editorial team were terrific.
Then I come to those whose fingerprints are simply all over the book: old friends like Vanessa Smith, Ivan Kreilkamp, Daniel Itzkovitz, and Sean McCann; new ones like Sanjay Krishnan, Eugene Sheppard, and the Time-Lapse group—Gina Turrigiano, Elizabeth Ferry, Tory Fair, Sharon Grimberg, Rahul Mehrotra, and Erik Noyes. Friends outside the academy who long ago won my love also earned my thanks for tough questions and unquestioning support during the long years of writing: Liberty Aldrich, Alex Star, Robert Glick. Finally, this book is entirely permeated by the generosity, wisdom, and patience of the Maple Ave. gang—Yoon Lee, Leah Price, Amanda Claybaugh, and Deidre Lynch. They richly deserve this book’s dedication—but will forgive me when they see who replaced them.
My grandmothers, Helen Plotz and Helen Abrams, are gone now but unforgotten. It makes me smile to think of my brother David, his wife Hanna, their Noa, Jacob, and Gideon. My parents Paul Plotz and Judith Abrams Plotz are a cold refreshing spring; what a joy that their grandchildren can drink from the same source David and I did growing up. Lisa Soltani: same as last time, nothing more to say and never less, on this earth or in it.
Semi-Detached draws on various earlier pieces, substantially reworked and revised. Portions of chapter 1 are adapted from “The Short Fiction of James Hogg” in The Edinburgh Companion to James Hogg, edited by Douglas Mack and Ian Duncan (Edinburgh University Press, 2012); and from “Victorian Short Stories” in Cambridge Companion to the English Short Story, edited by Ann-Marie Einhaus (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Portions of chapter 2 are adapted from “Antisocial Fictions: Mill and the Novel,” Novel 43:1 (2010): 38–46; and “Reading as a Resonant Cavity: John Stuart Mill’s Mediated Involvement,” 69–92 in The Feeling of Reading, edited by Rachel Ablow (U. Michigan Press, 2010). Portions of chapter 4 are adapted from “The Semi-Detached Provincial Novel,” Victorian Studies 53:3 (Fall 2011): 405–16; and from “The Provincial Novel,” 360–72 in A Companion to the English Novel, edited by Stephen Arata, J. Paul Hunter, and Jennifer Wicke (Blackwell, 2015). Portions of chapter 5 are adapted from “Two Flowers: George Eliot’s Diagrams and the Modern Novel,” 76–90 in A Companion to George Eliot, edited by Amanda Anderson and Harry Shaw (Blackwell, 2013); and from “Henry James’s Rat-tat-tat-ah: Insidious Loss, Disguised Recovery and Semi-Detached Subjects,” Henry James Review 34 (2013): 232–44. Portions of chapter 6 and the conclusion are adapted from “Materiality in Theory: What to Make of Victorian Things, Objects, and Commodities,” 522–38 in The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture, edited by Juliet John (Oxford University Press, 2016). Portions of chapter 8 are adapted from “Overtones and Empty Rooms: Willa Cather’s Semi-Detached Modernism” Novel 50:1 (2016):56–76, and “Partial to Opera: Sounding Willa Cather’s Empty Rooms” in Sounding Modernism: Rhythm and Sonic Mediation in Modern Literature and Film, forthcoming, edited by Julian Murphet, Helen Groth, and Penelope Hone (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). Portions of the conclusion are adapted from “This Book is 119 Years Overdue” Slate (November 17, 2011). I gratefully acknowledge generous support from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, as well as a Senior Faculty Research Leave from Brandeis University. Thanks are also due to the National Humanities Center for funding, and to my generous colleague Maurie Samuels for co-organizing, “The Virtual Nineteenth Century,” a 2011 conference about semi-detachment. Portions of this work were presented at Victoria University (NZ), University of Otago, Wesleyan, Yale, Durham University, Chicago, University of British Columbia, Harvard, University of Sydney, University of Edinburgh, University of Sussex, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo, Indiana University, University of Alabama, Brandeis, Boston College, Tufts, SUNY Binghamton, University of Wisconsin, University of Connecticut, Dickens Universe, and Notre Dame. I am grateful to audiences and colleagues there for their questions, comments, and subsequent correspondence.