The Nineteenth Century Periodical Press and the Development of Detective Fiction

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-0-367-02961-6
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 529 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature

This book re-imagines nineteenth-century detective fiction as a literary genre that was connected to, and nurtured by, contemporary periodical journalism. Whilst ‘detective fiction’ is almost universally-accepted to have originated in the nineteenth century, a variety of widely-accepted scholarly narratives of the genre’s evolution neglect to connect it with the development of a free press.

The volume traces how police officers, detectives, criminals, and the criminal justice system were discussed in the pages of a variety of magazines and journals, and argues that this affected how the wider nineteenth-century society perceived organised law enforcement and detection. This, in turn, helped to shape detective fiction into the genre that we recognise today. The book also explores how periodicals and newspapers contained forgotten, non-canonical examples of ‘detective fiction’, and that these texts can help complicate the narrative of the genre’s evolution across the mid- to late nineteenth century.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Saunders, Samuel

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatur: Sammlungen, Anthologien
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Lehrerausbildung, Unterricht & Didaktik Allgemeine Didaktik Literatur, Deutsch, Fremdsprachen (Unterricht & Didaktik)
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: Transzendentalphilosophie, Kritizismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Victorian Policing and Victorian Periodicals

Part 1: Policing and Crime in Periodicals

Chapter 1: Periodical Discourse on Policing: c. 1850-1875

Chapter 2: ‘A Condemned Cell with a View’: Crime Journalism c. 1750-1880

Part 2: Memoirs and Sensations

Chapter 3: ‘"Detective" literature, if it may be so called’: The Police Officer and the Police Memoir

Chapter 4: ‘The Romance of the Detective’: Police Memoir Fiction and Sensation Fiction

Part 3: From Scandal to the Strand Magazine

Chapter 5: ‘.people are naturally distrustful of its future working’: The 1877 Detective Scandal in the Victorian Mass Media

Chapter 6: From ‘Handsaw’ to Holmes: Police Officers and Detectives in Late-Victorian Journalism

Conclusion

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Samuel Saunders holds a PhD in English from Liverpool John Moores University, which he obtained in 2018 after defending a thesis that examined nineteenth-century crime and detective fiction and its connections with Victorian journalism and print culture. He has published research in numerous peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Popular Culture, the Wilkie Collins Journal, Law, Crime and History, and the journal of the Open Library of the Humanities, and has co-edited a collection on sidekicks in crime fiction. Samuel has taught English at both LJMU and the Unviersity of Chester, has acted as a guest professor for the Ohio State University, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).