Known as the great age of the realist novel and the epitome of staid decorum, the nineteenth century also had its guilty pleasures: mysteries, ghost stories, science fiction, imperialist adventure tales, and radical fantasies of gender confusion. In this course we will read both canonical realist novels and their non-traditional counterparts in an attempt to understand the productive interplay between these two seemingly disparate literary traditions. In our comparisons we will focus on numerous issues, including domesticity, gender politics, class and racial identity, and international politics. Authors may include: Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, the Brontës, Wilkie Collins, R.L. Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and others. 3 hrs.lect.