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If the rise and fall of the comparative method and the ushering of a new era of cultural relativism may be well-known anthropological narratives, Sloan is admirably attuned to Lang's nuances and complexities within that debate, including his willingness in later work to challenge the privileging of race in ethnographic accounts of progress. When Thomas Hardy ironically referred to Lang's objections to Tess of the D Urbervilles (1891) as the work of a critic of "innate gentility," he was aware that Lang's classical training and previous academic positions gave a particular kind of cultural authority to journalistic pronouncements that Lang claimed were simply personal taste (Tess of the D'Urbervilles [James К. CAROLINE SUMPTER ([email protected]) is Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature and Culture at Queen's University Belfast.