Cathrine Frank publishes new book on law and literature

Associate professor of English Cathrine Frank, Ph.D., has published Law, Literature, and the Transmission of Culture in England, 1837-1925 with Ashgate Press. In the new book, Frank parallels the legal bequest of property through the will with the transmission of cultural values through the novel, specifically, through nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels that depict and critique the motives and processes of making and implementing a will. Frank’s study combines case law, statutes, and legal manuals with novels, literary reviews, and contemporary periodicals in order to show how prevalent and important the ideas of ownership and the control of property were to even the average individual’s sense of self and place in the world. Read more.