Dante beyond influence is the first study to conceptualise and historicise the hermeneutic turn in Dante reception history and Victorian cultural history, charting its development across intellectual realms, agents and forms of readerly and writerly engagement. Unearthing previously unseen manuscript and print evidence, the book conducts a material and book-historical inquiry into the formation and popularisation of the critical and scholarly discourse on Dante through Victorian periodicals, mass-publishing, traditional and Extramural higher education. The book demonstrates that the transformation of Dante from object of amateur interest (dantophilia) to subject of systematic interpretive endeavours (dantismo) reflected paradigmatic changes in Victorian intellectual and socio-cultural history.

Reviews

'Dante Beyond Influence breaks genuinely new ground by going well beyond the realm of creative appropriation into the wider dimension of interpretive criticism and academic scholarship. Its tightly focused archival research supports a number of the study's key concerns. The development of networks of Dante reception is one of the many suggestive topics explored, as is the reading, scholarly and divulgative work of previously underrated Victorian women dantiste.'
Nicholas Havely, University of York

'A seminal book for studies of the modern reception of Dante, standing out in the great landscape of the centennial publications for methodological accuracy, breadth of interest, and narrative and structural coherence. In other words, it is a genuinely indispensable book that cannot be missed in the library of Dante scholars and literary reception specialists.'
Natale Vacalebre, Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies

'Dante beyond Influence opens new perspectives on how nineteenth-century Britons responded to Dante and how diverse audiences for his work were developed through particular engagement with the materiality and technology of Dante study [...] taking us beyond the aristocratic manuscript collection of the eighteenth century to Dante study for the populace.'
Alison Milbank, Speculum

Introduction: What do we talk about when we talk about Dante's reception?
1 Reading Gladstone reading Dante: Marginal annotation as private commentary
2 Ephemeral Dante: Matthew Arnold's criticism in Victorian periodicals
3 The critic and the scholar: Christina and Maria Francesca Rossetti's Dante sisterhood
4 'Everyman's Dante': Philip H. Wicksteed and Victorian mass readerships
5 Academic networks: Dante studies in Victorian Britain
Conclusion: From grande amore to lungo studio: rethinking the hermeneutic turn in reception history

Bibliography
Index