The “Theory and Interpretation of Narrative” series, published by the Ohio State University Press and co-edited by Professor of Comparative Literature Peter J. Rabinowitz, James Phelan and Robyn Warhol, recently published its 41st volume, Narrative Middles: Navigating the Nineteenth-Century British Novel.

This collection of new essays, edited by Caroline Levine and Mario Ortiz-Robles, goes against the grain. Most narrative theory has tended to emphasize narrative beginnings and endings. In contrast, Narrative Middles turns to “the bewildering, massive, deliberately undramatic enterprise of coming to terms with middles,” finding fresh new perspectives from which to consider both the sociohistorical and the formal aspects of multi-plot British novels by Austen, Eliot, Dickens, Collins and others.