Key reading

• Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England (references throughout)
• See also this lecture handout/powerpoint on Victorian Literature and Crime

Further Reading

• Maurizio Ascari, A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational
• James Chapman and Matthew Hilton, 'From Sherlock Holmes to James Bond : Masculinity and national identity in British popular fiction', in Stephen Chaunce et al, Relocation Britishness
• Philip Collins, Dickens and Crime
• Michael Cook, Narratives of Enclosure in Detective Fiction
• Emelyne Godfrey, Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature
• Stephen Knight, Crime Fiction, 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity
• Nicola Lacey, Women, Crime and Character: from Moll Flanders to Tess of the D'Urbevilles
• Andrew Mangham, Violent Women and Sensation Fiction
• Josephine McDonagh, Child Murder and British Culture, 1720-1900
• Robert Morrison and Daniel Roberts, Thomas de Quincey (chapter on 'On Murder')
• Christopher Pittard, 'Cheap, Healthful Literature : The Strand Magazine, Fictions of Crime and Purified Reading Communities', Victorian Periodicals Review, 40 (2007)
• Martin Priestman, The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction
• Lynn Pykett, The Sensation Novel: from The Woman in White to the Moonstone
• Lynn Pykett, The 'Improper Feminine': the Women's Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing
• Lisa Rodensky, The Crime in Mind: Criminal Responsibility and the Victorian Novel
• Haia Shpayer-Makiv, 'Revisiting the detective figure in late Victorian and Edwardian fiction', Law, Crime and History, 1 (2011)
• Anthea Trodd, Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel
• Heather Worthington, The Rise of the Detective in Early Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction
• Deborah Wynne, The Sensation Novel and the Victorian Family Magazine

Questions

• What are the main elements of the so-called 'sensation' novels of the 1860s
• What are the links between disciplines such as psychoanalysis and anthropology and the crime novels of the late 19th/early 20th century
• Does literature reflect or shape society's attitudes to crime and criminals?
• How are crimes, criminals and the police represented in the novels you have studied?
• What does reading Victorian crime novels add to an understanding of criminality in this period?