We are a century removed from Queen Victoria's death, yet the culture that bears her name is alive and well across the globe. Not only is Victorian culture the subject of lively critical debate, but it draws widespread interest from popular audiences and consumers.

Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time addresses the theme of the Victorians' continuing legacy and its effect on our own culture and perception of the world. The contributors' diverse topics include the persistent influence of Jack the Ripper on police procedures, the enormous success of the magazine Victoria and the lifestyle it promotes, and film, television, and theatrical adaptations of Victorian texts.

Also addressed are appropriations of Oscar Wilde to market gay identity in contemporary advertising, and appeals to the Victorian empire in constructing the 'New Britain' for the era of globalization. Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time encourages a critique of how these artifacts contribute to contemporary culture and confronts the challenges of disseminating the older culture in the new millennium.

The contributors include Simon Joyce, Ronald R. Thomas, Miriam Bailin, Ellen Bayuk Rosenman, Jesse Matz, Sharon Aronofsky Weltman, Kathleen Lonsdale, Christine L. Krueger, Florence Boos, David Barndollar, Susan Schorn, and Sue Lonoff.

In 1852, young Walt Whitman—a down-on-his-luck housebuilder in Brooklyn—was hard at work writing two books. One would become one of the most famous volumes of poetry in American history, a free-verse revelation beloved the world over, Leaves of Grass. The other, a novel, would be published under a pseudonym and serialized in a newspaper. A short, rollicking story of orphanhood, avarice, and adventure in New York City, Life and Adventures of Jack Engle appeared to little fanfare.
 
Then it disappeared.
 
No one laid eyes on it until 2016, when literary scholar Zachary Turpin, University of Houston, followed a paper trail deep into the Library of Congress, where the sole surviving copy of Jack Engle has lain waiting for generations. Now, after more than 160 years, the University of Iowa Press is honored to reprint this lost work, restoring a missing piece of American literature by one of the world’s greatest authors, written as he verged on immortality.