"In his brilliant new book, Christopher Lane examines representations of an intractably anticommunitarian hatred in Victorian literature. Going far beyond familiar accounts of complexities and duplicities in the ethical and sexual ideals of Victorian culture, Lane discovers in the works of great writers of the period -- notably Dickens, George Eliot, and Browning -- affects of rage and hate that exceed all narrative control. With impeccable scholarship and admirable clarity, he gives us an often harrowing portrait of these writers' fascination with drives that are irreducible to psychological explanations -- drives of self-extinction and of motiveless rage at the happiness of others. This is a major work of cultural criticism." -- Leo Bersani, author of The Culture of Redemption.