Introduction: Reading things
Souvenirs of sadism: mahogany furniture, deforestations, and slavery in Jane Eyre
Coziness and its vicissitudes: checked curtains and global cotton markets in Mary Barton
Realism, fetishism, and genocide: negro head tobacco in and around Great Expectations
Toward a history of literary underdetermination: standardizing meaning in Middlemarch
Coda: Victorian thing culture and the way we read now.