Professor Helen Small, Merton Professor of English Language and Literature introduces the novel discussing its themes and context. The group had read up to Chapter 13 in the first two weeks of the BIG READ.

Professor Helen Small regularly writes essays about Victorian fiction, poetry, and public moralism, and has edited several well-known and less well-known nineteenth-century literary works, including Vanity Fair, Wuthering Heights, The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob, The Eustace Diamonds, The Last Chronicle of Barset, and (with Stephen Wall) Little Dorrit. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Victorian Culture and the advisory board of History of Humanities.

Illustration: ‘You don’t quite know Mr Kennedy yet’ reproduced from the first edition published London, Virtue and Co., 1869. 2 vols. Originally published in Saint Paul’s Magazine, October 1867 – May 1869. Illustrations by Sir John Millais

Resources

• Plot summary, character listings and illustrations for Phineas Finn
• Download Phineas Finn free of charge from Project Gutenberg