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Nineteenth-century social problem fiction anticipated state-centralized collectivism by modernizing Britain's centuries-old organic ideology. George Eliot's Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) exemplifies modernized organicism in two ways, combining moderate upward mobility with traditional social hierarchy and relocating paternalism to impersonal state structures. The novel authorizes these projects through creative forms of consent. Formally, Felix Holt expresses this modernization through 'organic appeals,' which reconcile faith in a finely graded, centralized social system with individual and communal volition. Free of allegiance to mid-century political parties and their predictable hesitations over centralization, Eliot extended the elements of modernized organicism that she found in earlier social problem fiction, harnessing them to a robustly corporatist vision that New Liberal politicians would later find an inspiration to welfare reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study of research in the digital humanities field, examining the authors' project of tracking word frequency trends and social space in digitized nineteenth century British novels. The authors comment on methodological issues in the digital humanities and explore problems surrounding anecdotal evidence, validation, and interpretation.

The article discusses the cover of the issue, comments on changes to the journal's staff, and announces that a special issue of the journal will be devoted to Victorianist historicism in the literary criticism field. It notes that the cover of the issue features an image that is entitled “System of Sociolatry” from the book "The Catechism of Positive Religion" by Auguste Comte and translated by Richard Congreve. The departure of journal editors Maureen Hattrup and Stephanie Koscak is also noted.

An introduction is presented to this special issue arising from the November 2014 North American Victorian Studies Association's annual conference "Victorian Classes & Classifications” held in London, Ontario.