Explores the politics of nineteenth-century British realism

Winner of the 2019 Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on Literature
Offers a new theory of institutions grounded in temporality
Outlines a transnational theory of British realism that emerges from interpreting Irish realist novels
Reassesses the politics of realism and the politics of institutions
Contains close-reading of realist novels as well as a new genealogy of British realism
Advances a new understanding of the relationship between realism and colonialism

This book examines anachronisms in realist writing from the colonial periphery to redefine British realism and rethink the politics of institutions. Paying unprecedented attention to nineteenth-century Irish novels, it demonstrates how institutions constrain social relationships in the present and limit our sense of political possibilities in the future. It argues that we cannot escape institutions, but we can refuse the narrow political future that they work to secure.