Man and Society in Nineteenth-Century Realism - Determinism and Literature

London: Macmillan, 1980. A Fine unmarked copy with VG+ dustjacket which is not price clipped. ix + 201 pages. Second impression (first was 1977). The book surveys the social and intellectual changes in Europe that encouraged a determinist view of Man in 19th century Realism. It examines the growing attention that thinkers of the time paid to environment and heredity as shaping forces: and it indicates how the social consequences of the French and Industrial Revolutions made writers aware that they were living in a rapidly shifting society. The book compares the responses of the better known Realists to these developments - notably Stendhal, Balzac, Büchner, Mrs. Gaskell, Flaubert, George Eliot, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Zola, Ibsen, Fontane and Chekhov. **** NOT EX LIB **** B2B. Hard Cover. Fine/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.