This seminar offers a survey of high Victorian fiction and in so doing also explores complex socio-historical issues of material culture textualized in novels. We will discuss the Victorian novel within a time of unprecedented material accumulations and, in particular, examine how novels sit between the reproduction of material culture and the reshaping of it. The nexus of novelistic texts and things requires an interdisciplinary approach that cuts across the boundaries of literary studies, historical studies, and material culture studies. Students are encouraged to pay attention to the surface of fiction in addition to the unfolding narrative. This course seeks to foreground the contextual dimensions of novel writing and raise some important questions regarding novel forms and functions: How are writings of objects deployed in the Victorian novels? How is “the realist vision” underpinned by contextual writing of things? What are some potential sociological roles assumed by realist novels to relate the material production and consumption to the ongoing of everyday life? By the end of the course, students are expected to be familiar with selected canonical texts and, furthermore, will demonstrate adequate research skills in conducting socio-historical studies of literature.