The Victorian Novel by Deirdre David
Published 2001 · 95,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Victorian Novel to read?
The Victorian Novel scores 59 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 60 out of 100
- Academic prose varying in difficulty across contributors; mostly accessible.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Abstraction: 65 out of 100
- Theoretical frameworks lightly carried; focus on texts and contexts.
- Information density: 72 out of 100
- Rich with specific textual and historical detail.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Direct scholarly argument throughout.
- Symbolic density: 100 out of 100
- Analytical throughout.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Scholarly register without ironic distance.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Each essay resolves its argument.
- Structural complexity: 38 out of 100
- Multi-author collection organized thematically with editorial framing.
How The Victorian Novel is regarded
The Victorian Novel holds a literary regard score of 58 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.