Far From the Madding Crowd – Journal of Victorian Culture Online

‘Out of Style’: Taylor Swift, Genre, and the Victorian Novel

October 22, 2025 Amber Alsaigh Essay, Victorians Beyond the Academy

Known all too well for her name in popular culture, Taylor Swift is gaining a reputation in literary circles, too. To enchanted listeners, she’s not just a singer-songwriter; she’s a poet as well. Following the release of Swift’s eleventh album, The Tortured Poets Department (2024), Stephanie Burt published an article in The Nation that recognised Swift’s mastery of literary devices, ranging from apostrophe and hyperbole to slant rhyme. Burt is certainly not alone in her attention to Swift as a

Karen Laird, Film Review: Far From the Madding Crowd

July 20, 2015 lucinda matthews-jones Published in JVC, Victorians in Film

Karen Laird’s book The Art of Adapting Victorian Literature, 1849–1920 will be published in August 2015 by Ashgate Press. Follow her latest updates on Twitter @drkarenlaird. Far from the Madding Crowd was first adapted for film in 1915 by the British studio Turner Pictures. Reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic saw it as a lukewarm effort save for the lead performance by Florence Turner (known early in her phenomenal career as simply “The Vitagraph Girl”). One critic praised Turner’s