Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation

by Moore,Grace

• ISBN13: 9780754640608
• ISBN10: 0754640604
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-02-16
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Beginning with Victoria's enthronement and an exploration of sensationalist accounts of attacks on the Queen, and ending with the notorious case of a fin-de-siècle killer, Victorian Crime, Madness, and Sensation throws new light on nineteenth-century attitudes toward crime and 'deviance'. The essays, which draw on both canonical and liminal texts, examine the Victorian fascination with criminal psychology and pathology, engaging with real life cases alongside fictional accounts by writers as diverse as Ainsworth, Stevenson, and Stoker. Among the topics are shifting definitions of criminality and the ways in which discourses surrounding crime, and particularly its representation by journalists and fiction writers, changed during the nineteenth century. Individual essays also consider the literal and social criminalization of particular sex acts, the gendering of degeneration and insanity, and the role of science and technology in solving cases.

Table of Contents

General Editor's Preface	vii
List of Illustrations	viii
Notes on Contributors	ix
Acknowledgements	xii
Introduction	1	(14)
Andrew Maunder
Grace Moore
Regicide and Reginamania: G.W.M. Reynolds and The Mysteries of London	15	(16)
John Plunkett
The Making of a Master Criminal: The `Chief of the Thugs' in Victorian Writings on Crime	31	(14)
Maire ni Fhlathuin
Black Markets and Cadaverous Pies: The Corpse, Urban Trade and Industrial Consumption in the Penny Blood	45	(14)
Sally Powell
``Stepchildren of Nature'': East Lynne and the Spectre of Female Degeneracy, 1860-1861	59	(14)
Andrew Maunder
Murder, Gender, and Popular Fiction by Women in the 1860s: Braddon, Oliphant, Yonge	73	(16)
June Sturrock
Anatomy of a ``Nine Days' Wonder'': Sensational Journalism in the Decade of the Sensation Novel	89	(16)
Dallas Liddle
The Inside Story: Crime, Convicts and Careers for Women	105	(14)
Barbara Onslow
``The Truth of Midnight'' and ``The Truth of Noonday'': Sensation and Madness in James Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night	119	(16)
Dafydd Moore
Puffed Papers and Broken Promises: White-Collar Crime and Literary Justice in The Way We Live Now	135	(12)
Karen Odden
Something to Hyde: The ``Strange Preference'' of Henry Jekyll	147	(16)
Grace Moore
The Novelization of the Dreyfus Affair: Femininity and Sensation in Fin-de-Siecle France	163	(16)
Christopher E. Forth
``Furious Passions of the Celtic Race'': Ireland, Madness and Wilkie Collins's Blind Love	179	(16)
Maria K. Bachman
Time's Hand: Fingerprints, Empire, and Victorian Narratives of Crime	195	(12)
Gita Panjabi Trelease
Vamping the Children: The ``Bloofer Lady'', the ``London Minotaur'' and Child-Victimization in Late Nineteenth-Century England	207	(12)
Leslie Ann Minot
Ballad of a Demon Barber: The Criminal Career of George Chapman	219	(18)
Nicholas Freeman
Bibliography	237	(12)
Index	249