In its nuanced examination of a wide variety of Victorian theories of mind, including physiognomy, physiology, associationism, and cognitive philosophies, 'Amnesiac Selves' draws a portrait of the interaction between psychology and the novel in the years 1810-1870.

With Joyce, Proust, and Faulkner in mind, we have come to understand the novel as a form with intimate ties to the impulses and processes of memory. This study contends that this common perception is an anachronism that distorts our view of the novel. Based on an investigation of
representative novels, Amnesiac Selves shows that the Victorian novel bears no such secure relation to memory, and, in fact, it tries to hide, evade, and eliminate remembering. Dames argues that the notable scarcity and distinct unease of representations of remembrance in the nineteenth-century
British novel signal an art form struggling to define and construct new concepts of memory. By placing nineteenth-century British fiction from Jane Austen to Wilkie Collins alongside a wide variety of Victorian psychologies and theories of mind, Nicholas Dames evokes a novelistic world, and a
culture, before modern memory--one dedicated to a nostalgic evasion of detailed recollection which our time has largely forgotten.

Amnesiac Selves is a highly intelligent, stimulating work, which will keep readers in constant dialogue. Dames is a skilful close reader of texts, and moves deftly between individual analysis and general claim.