Victorian Investments is an outstanding example of the merits of economic cultural studies. Bringing fresh insights to significant historical contexts and literary works, these essays invite scholars to reconsider established wisdom about nation building, gendered divisions of finance, what we might term “economic literature,” and the very term “investment.” This is a generous collection in every sense of the term, commendable for the breadth of its voices and for the wealth of information it offers both newcomers to and veterans of the study of Victorian finance. The introduction, cowritten by editors Nancy Henry and Cannon Schmitt, situates readers within current debates and scholarship with a grace that makes its depth and thoroughness seem simple. Assembling contributions from top scholars in history and literature, Henry and Schmitt offer us a diverse and highly readable volume. The bibliography alone provides an invaluable index of foundational works in the burgeoning field of study.

Ian Baucom’s essay, which stands alone in a section entitled “A Prehistory of Victorian Investing,” examines the resonant case of the ship Zong. When, in 1781, the crew threw 133 of the men and women among the ship’s “cargo” overboard, the captain’s rationale was economic: the slaves were sick and worth more to him, according to the ship’s insurance policy, as jettisoned cargo than at market. Focusing on the importance of insurance as a mechanism that depends for its value on destruction and loss, Baucom reconsiders the central question in the Zong hearings: were the slaves property or people? The court decided for the former. The legal machinations of insurance thus codified “the colonization of human subjectivity by finance capital” (31).

While the following two sections, “Cultures of Investment” and “Fictions of Investment,” might seem to divide the contributors between historians and literary critics, respectively (the sole exception being Mary Poovey, whose essay appears under “Cultures”), the divide is hardly so neat. Indeed, the volume benefits from the wide-ranging knowledge of its authors, who collectively model the very best of interdisciplinary work. Poovey’s essay, for example, considers the relationships among financial journalism, fiction, and a nineteenth-century culture in which information was as valuable as cash. In the discourse of accounting, Poovey identifies a fantasy of perfect writing, the ideal of which was complete disclosure. Her closing reading of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) demonstrates how deeply that fantasy informed the aspirations of realism. Timothy Alborn develops the links between accounting and accountability, elegantly elucidating the complicated world of Victorian life insurance, particularly the importance of secrecy in alluring investors and policyholders. The competing interests behind “bonuses” and “endowment funds” divided types of investment and classes of investors, both. Donna Loftus’s essay on the rise of limited liability carries forward the arguments about disclosure and class competition, spelling out how various debates about democratizing the market concerned a desire for access to information as much as to capital. In a similar vein, David Itzkowitz argues that, by classifying “bucket shops” and gambling as illegitimate fiscal venues, mid-Victorian financial analysts managed simultaneously to legitimate standard market endeavors and effectively to condemn those practices most available to the working classes. Itzkowitz offers a thoroughgoing account of the struggles to distinguish investment from speculation that continue to trouble the current market. Considering another frequently ignored class of investors, George Robb offers a terrific revisionist history of women in the sphere of capital finance. Robb treats both British and U.S. markets, unearthing a treasure trove of material about women’s investments in industrial capitalism. Alongside details about the difficulties women faced in controlling their holdings, the essay provides backgrounds on successful businesswomen and on the development of “ladies departments” in banks.

Engaging an impressive range of literary, journalistic, and ephemeral texts, Robb’s essay provides the hinge into “Fictions of Investment.” Audrey Jaffe’s extended reading of Anthony Trollope’s The Prime Minister (1876) leads this section, showing how the novel creates a language of feeling that renders marriage plots and market plots equally instructive narrative forms. In The Prime Minister, Jaffe argues, the heroine “must be taught to invest her emotions, as she would her money, wisely. The terms of romance and those of finance are interchangeable” (147). If it seems logical that the market would inspire new forms of narrative, Nancy Henry’s study of investor suicides inverts the paradigm, illustrating the influence of the novel on the market and its narratives. In light of the legend of failed investors throwing themselves from high windows, especially following the crash of 1929, the real numbers of investor suicides are quite low. The legend, Henry argues, derives from the plots of Victorian novels by Dickens, Trollope, Charlotte Riddell, George Gissing, Edith Wharton, and others. Such authors, Henry argues, used suicide to resolve both their plots and their culture’s contradictory attitudes toward an often corrupt market. Cannon Schmitt’s essay on Conrad’s Nostromo (1904) introduces the reader to the role of South America in British imperial capitalism. Fascinating, informative, and consummately literary, Schmitt’s piece brings the collection full circle, focusing on the relationships among temporality, finance, information, and form.

A word about cultural history: the current generation of scholars has largely left aside disciplinary gatekeeping, and Victorian Investments clearly demonstrates the benefits of doing so. Rich in historical contexts and attentive literary readings both of literature and of other cultural texts, this collection models the profits of a collaborative approach. In this setting, Martin Daunton’s afterword seems something of a throwback, more concerned with correcting method than with assimilating the volume’s valuable contributions to the study of Victorian finance culture. His essay is, nonetheless, packed with information and adds to the many merits of this book.

Victorian Investments will appeal to a wide range of readers, from undergraduates to scholars well versed in economic history. Like Frances O’Gorman’s edited volume Victorian Literature and Finance (London, 2007) and recent books by many of the authors, this collection contributes meaningfully to our understanding of Victorian culture.