This dissertation investigates the diverse and abundant afterlife of the British nineteenth century in contemporary culture, arguing that contemporary appropriations of nineteenth-century culture use narrative forms to reimagine the period as a site of immersive and creative play. My work advances current scholarship on the legacy of nineteenth-century culture by focusing on an area of critical oversight in neo-Victorian studies: the "middlebrow," or the cultural space where high art merges with mass culture. Despite scholars' tendency to ignore the middlebrow in favor of "high brow" works, I demonstrate that middlebrow culture is not only worthy of academic inquiry, but that it is in fact integral to contemporary conceptions of the nineteenth century within both popular and academic circles.

To this end, I investigate a diverse body of cultural objects, including adaptations of Jane Austen's novels in fiction and film; the prolific afterlife of Jack the Ripper; reinterpretations of Victorian media in contemporary film and comics; and the practice of "visiting" the Victorian through literary tourism. I argue that these seemingly disparate objects and activities all function according to a similar logic of imaginative play. Recent research has shown that play is a formative mode of human behavior that contributes to identity formation and our ability to imagine the minds of others. Using theories of play drawn from cultural history, psychoanalysis, and developmental psychology, I assert that the nineteenth century has come to function as a cultural and psychological playground within the middlebrow, a space that allows its players to work through contemporary anxieties about cultural change, shifting gender and sexual mores, modern violence, and evolving media.

My work demonstrates that, despite prevalent assumptions that middlebrow culture's use of the nineteenth century is an exercise in uncritical nostalgia, middlebrow appropriations of this period often function as productive--if at times problematic--modes of historical engagement that, through play, promote social understanding and self expression. These reiterations of the nineteenth century offer significant insight into the period's cultural legacy, the uses of history in contemporary culture, and the role of play in modern life.