Class, culture and suburban anxieties in the Victorian era / by Lara Baker Whelan.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [167]-177) and index.

Introduction: "scenes of peace and quietude," or Victorian fantasies of suburban utopia -- Dying of one's neighbors: Victorian suburban literature and its deconstruction of the suburban ideal -- Where there is no profligacy, drunkenness or crime: representations of the working class and origins of suburban anxieties -- Cracks in the façade: looking behind the cult of the picturesque in Victorian suburban fiction -- Controlling "that region of irregular bodies": the uninhabitable house and the suburban ghost story -- Gothic terrors: the suburban ruin and sensation fiction -- Sublime suburbs -- Conclusion: the death of the suburban ideal and the rise of the new suburban, 1880-1914.