There is much to admire about Benjamin Kohlmann’s British Literature and the Life of Institutions. It is meticulously researched, sheds new light on a largely neglected movement within British literature in its emphasis on Britain’s long Hegelian moment, and offers readings of a series of novels by both canonical and less canonical writers—with a focus on late nineteenth-century and Edwardian writers—as contributors to a sustained and hitherto underappreciated debate about reformist politics, the state, and the possibilities that lie within rather than outside of institutions. Framed by the eminently sensible question of why we don’t tend to get overly excited about reform, Kohlmann’s book tries to whip up some excitement both by asking us to think about the state anew and by making the case for how central the issue of reform was in public conversations and the fictional work of writers during the period from 1870–1910. Throughout, the...

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