Table of Contents

Preface
Part 1: Land and Letters
1. Capital and the Embrace of Letters
2. On the Credibility of Writing: Material Promise
3. The Career of English
Part 2: Culture and Capital
4. Governing the Tongue
5. Inequality, Management and the Hatred of Literature
6. Cultural Capital and the Shameful University
Part 3: Institutional and Human Capital
7. The Privatization of All Interests
8. Radical Geography
Index

Promotional Information

A landmark new economic history of literary culture and its institutions from the early modern period, through the age of imperialism, to 21st-century neoliberalism.

About the Author

Thomas Docherty is Professor of English at the University of Warwick, UK. He has published on most areas of English and comparative literature from the Renaissance to the present day. His previous books include After Theory (1996), The English Question (2008) and For the University (Bloomsbury, 2011).

Reviews

An impassioned critique of financial capitalism and its relationship to the institution of literature ... [The] breadth in literary selection no doubt reveals Docherty’s mastery over this canonical corpus ... Literature and Capital is written in a clear, accessible language.
*Marx & Philosophy Review of Books*

A radical reappraisal of the ways in which literary study challenges and is challenged by the ascent of money. This is a work of panoptic precision, in which intellectual passion is matched by sound scholarly scruple.
*Declan Kiberd, Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA*

Literature and Capital is a wonderful wide-ranging and erudite study. At once tolerant and angry, and written with great perception and persuasion, it details with a powerful intelligence the relationships between literature, land, education, enquiry and the various cultural organisations of capital. Thomas Docherty is a critical provocateur for our times and this book is the kind of urgent and committed scholarship that the present requires.
*Stuart Murray, Professor of Contemporary Literatures and Film, University of Leeds, UK*

An impassioned and cogent analysis of the entwining of literature and capital that continually impresses on account of its historical depth and critical vigilance. Above all, a compelling argument for why a radical study of literature is needed to engage with the multiple challenges of our times.
*Michael Rossington, Professor of Romantic Literature, Newcastle University, UK*

This is a very important book in the backdrop of our contemporary thinking around literature, marketplace, survival, funds and capital. Through a deeply meshed intervention involving human, cultural, institutional and financial capital, Docherty has pulled off a stunning achievement where credit and literary creditilization and credibility have come into a formidable play.
*Ranjan Ghosh, University of North Bengal, India*