The Art of Alibi

by Grossman, Jonathan H.

• ISBN13: 9780801867552
• ISBN10: 080186755X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-01-23
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

In The Art of Alibi, Jonathan Grossman reconstructs the relation of the novel to nineteenth-century law courts. During the Romantic era, courthouses and trial scenes frequently found their way into the plots of English novels. As Grossman states, "by the Victorian period, these scenes represented a powerful intersection of narrative form with a complementary and competing structure for storytelling." He argues that the courts, newly fashioned as a site in which to orchestrate voices and reconstruct stories, arose as a cultural presence influencing the shape of the English novel. Weaving examinations of novels such as William Godwin's Caleb Williams, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, along with a reading of the new Royal Courts of Justice, Grossman charts the exciting changes occurring within the novel, especially crime fiction, that preceded and led to the invention of the detective mystery in the 1840s.

Author Biography

Jonathan H. Grossman is an assistant professor of English at the University of Delaware.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

From Scaffold to Law Court, from Criminal Broadsheet and Biography to Newspaper Novel

Caleb Williams and the Novel's Forensic Form

Mary Shelley's Legal Frankenstein

Victorian Courthouse Structures

Mary Barton's Telltale Evidence

The Newgate Novel and Advent of Detective Fiction

Conclusion

Notes

Index

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