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This chapter has six sections: 1. General and Prose; 2. The Novel; 3. Poetry; 4. Periodicals and Publishing History; 5. Drama; 6. Miscellaneous and Cross-Genre. Section 1 is by Ana Alicia Garza; section 2 is by Lois Burke with assistance from Christian Dickinson, who writes on Dickens; section 3 is by Ana Alicia Garza; section 4 is by Helen Williams; section 5 is by Lucy Barnes; section 6 is by William Baker. Thanks for assistance with this chapter must go to Dominic Edwards, Steven Amarnick, Richard Bleiler, Nancy S. Weyant, the bibliographer of Mrs Gaskell, and Patrick Scott. In a departure from previous years, and in order to avoid confusion as to who has contributed what to this chapter, George Borrow, Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, and Richard Jefferies, previously found in the General and Prose section, and the Brontës, Samuel Butler, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, George Henry Lewes, George Gissing, and Anthony Trollope, previously found in the Novel section, will be found in section 6, Miscellaneous and Cross-Genre, as will materials that came in too late to be included in other sections.

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To many 19th-century scholars, Richard Hughes Gibson's topic will undoubtedly seem a rather broad one. Yet, despite the scope of the study, and the fact that it deals with canonical authors from the era, Gibson's text does not at all feel obsolete. This is primarily due to the fact that literary scholarship as a whole, and 19th-century scholarship in particular, is still in the process of rediscovering the importance of religious belief and practice to Victorian-era literature. As such, any recent criticism which focuses on a subject like the use of forgiveness in Victorian Literature seems to be entirely absent. For the most part, Gibson's analysis focuses solely on his primary texts.In the first chapter (which also serves as an introduction), Richard Hughes Gibson lays out his analytical methodology-the venues by which he will approach the uses of forgiveness in the era's literature. The venues are 'grammar', which deals with the necessity of a shared linguistic understanding of forgiveness between characters; 'narrative', which suggests that forgiveness must happen in individual 'scenes' as well as over time, and 'community', which looks at how a private wrong may engender public scorn. Finally, in addition to these venues, Gibson acknowledges the important contextual role religious belief plays in the understanding of the concept as a whole. Gibson is certainly aware of the traditional ''secularization narrative'' when dealing with a religiously charged topic like forgiveness, and gives careful attention to the fact that each of these authors represent various shades of the sectarian fragmentation that was taking place in the religious landscape of England at the time. If an understanding of forgiveness is couched in religious language and belief, then a Unitarian (Dickens) would approach the concept of forgiveness differently from a High Church Anglican (Trollope), someone with an Evangelical background (Eliot), an agnostic (Hardy), or questioning Catholic (Wilde). The structure of the chapters (from early Victorian to mid-century and then fin de sie`cle authors) is of course also important, as it imitates the passage of time and thus the movement toward the religious fragmentation and modern ''secularization'' that the traditional narrative regarding the period embodied.In Gibson's second chapter, which deals with Dickens, he notes that in The Life of Our Lord, ''Dickens's Jesus rarely teaches on a topic other than forgiveness or the related dispositions of compassion and mercy'' (45). In his analysis of Dickens's

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