What is retail therapy? Why is shopping fun? Where does desire end and ideology begin in a world of mass consumption? These are some of the central questions of Fictions of Commodity Culture, a wide-ranging study of consumerism and its literary representation from the Victorian period through to the postmodern era. Cutting across period boundaries, this lively book draws on recent thinking in critical and cultural theory to offer analysis of works by writers as diverse as Elizabeth Gaskell, William Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Joseph Conrad, and Don DeLillo. From Gaskell's prefiguring of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting to Conrad's foreshadowing of the Sex Pistols story, Fictions of Commodity Culture shows the ways in which cultural production in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often anticipated the crazy and disorienting consumer world of late capitalism.

Contents: Can't get no satisfaction: the world of commodities; Down and out in Gaskell's industrial novels; Thackeray's gourmand: carnivals of consumption in Vanity Fair; Trollope's material girl: gender and capitalism in The Eustace Diamonds; Damaged goods: decay in Conrad's The Secret Agent; Shop till you drop: retail therapy in DeLillo's White Noise; Postscript: 'Step right up'; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author: Christoph Lindner is Professor and Chair of English Literature, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He has published articles and reviews on Victorian literature, modernism, and postmodernism, and is the editor of The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader.

Reviews: '... brilliant introductory chapter... Lindner's book is not likely to become just another commodity in this age of buy, consume and throw away. That it is to be pored over, re-read and learnt from, indeed, that it resists commoditization, is probably the finest recommendation one can give of a critical study in an age where even ideas and critical theories have become engulfed in our obsessive culture of consumption.' Orbis Litterarum

'... the juxtaposition of texts from two centuries is intelligently done and the book as a whole functions as a stimulating way to trace the representational origins of themes which have later become culturally dominant.' Studies in English Literature

'Lindner substantiates his assertions with excellent explanations of the theory in which his analysis is grounded. He also provides a comprehensive bibliography. The connections that Lindner makes between nineteenth-century novels and postmodern works are interesting and informative. His book will be of interest to scholars concerned with nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels, capitalism and modern social theory, Marxism, materialism, the cultural politics of consumption, and commodity culture.' Victorian Periodicals Review