Reading Victorian deafness : signs and sounds in Victorian literature and culture / Jennifer Esmail.

Athens : Ohio University Press, [2013]

xi, 285 pages : black and white illustrations ; 24 cm

Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-272) and index.

Introduction -- "Perchance my hand may touch the lyre:" deaf poetry and the politics of language -- "I listened with my eyes": writing speech and reading deafness in the fiction of Charles Dickens and wilkie Collins -- "Human in shape, but only half human in attributes": sign language, evolutionary theory, and the animal-human divide -- "A deaf variety of the human race"?: sign language, deaf marriage, and utopian and dystopian visons of deaf communities -- "Finding the shapes of sounds": prosthetic technology, speech, and Victorian deafness -- Conclusion.