"Why Victorian Literature Still Matters is a powerful defense of the enduring impact of Victorian realism today. With a nod to the popularity of phrenology within that era, noted literary thinker Philip Davis points to a comer of the human mind where mid-Victorian literature resides. This "Victorian bump," he argues, is an area concerned with human purpose, morality, secularization and belief, human stories, and living in time." "Rather than emphasizing Victorian literature as an historical and reassuring body of knowledge, Davis explains its centrality for contemporary readers as an important mode of thinking and feeling, and provides a gateway of analysis into the popular prose and poetry of the Victorian Age. Why Victorian Literature Still Matters is a personal manifesto, inviting readers to discover what it is that really moves them in a book. The author offers readers the encouragement to find out what Victorian literature means for them and how it relates to our wider human existence."--Jacket.