Examines literary orphan figures and kinship structures in the nineteenth-century novel Rereading Texts, Inheritance, Kin explores the ways in which the figure of the literary orphan can be used to illuminate our understanding of the culture and mores of the long nineteenth century, especially those relating to family and kinship. The chapters in the book explore how orphan characters (both child and adult) contribute to discourses of gender, home, inheritance, illegitimacy, notions of the human and the development of the novel across a wide range of canonical and non-canonical texts.