The Victorian era was characterized by an impulse to improve things, beginning with the self and extending outward to the nation. Importantly, this impulse also provided impetus to imperial expansion and ideological projects such as the “civilizing mission.” This course pursues Victorian improvement regimes through three units—self-help, reform, and empire—which are, ultimately, not all that distinct from one another. Readings include Dickens’ Hard Times, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King,” Stevenson’s “The Beach of Falesá,” excerpts from John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography and On Liberty, Samuel Smiles’ Self Help, Engels on The Condition of the Working Class in England, Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, and writings on the “Woman Question.”