Late Victorian Crime Fiction in the Shadows of Sherlock

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Clare Clarke

   Pages 1-12

3. ‘Ordinary Secret Sinners’: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

   • Clare Clarke

   Pages 13-42

4. ‘The Most Popular Book of Modern Times’: Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886)

   • Clare Clarke

   Pages 43-71

5. ‘L’homme c’est rien — l’oeuvre c’est tout’: The Sherlock Holmes Stories and Work

   • Clare Clarke

   Pages 72-103

6. Something for ‘the Silly Season’: Policing and the Press in Israel Zangwill’s The Big Bow Mystery (1891)

   • Clare Clarke

   Pages 104-127

7. Tales of ‘Mean Streets’: The Criminal-Detective in Arthur Morrison’s The Dorrington Deed-Box (1897)

   • Clare Clarke

   Pages 128-154

8. ‘A Criminal in Disguise’: Class and Empire in Guy Boothby’s A Prince of Swindlers (1897)

   • Clare Clarke

   Pages 155-180

9. Conclusion

   • Clare Clarke

   Pages 181-183

10. Back Matter

    Pages 184-221

    PDF

This book investigates the development of crime fiction in the 1880s and 1890s, challenging studies of late-Victorian crime fiction which have given undue prominence to a handful of key figures and have offered an over-simplified analytical framework, thereby overlooking the generic, moral, and formal complexities of the nascent genre.

• Sherlock Holmes
• Victorian
• Crime Fiction
• Detective Fiction
• David Hume
• empire
• fiction
• genre
• press
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• Victorian era

“Clarke also subjects the texts she investigates to a systematic and nuanced analysis, revealing their reflection of contemporary social reality, larger disputed issues, tensions, anxieties, and concerns. Indeed, there are many more forgotten detective narratives that lend themselves to this type of analysis, and are yet to be explored.” (Haia Shpayer-Makov, Victorian Studies, Vol. 58 (4), 2016)

'This rigorous and passionate book will make you want to sprint to Project Gutenberg in search of the texts, as well as give you a keen appreciation of just why Victorian magazine editors vied to find the next Arthur Conan Doyle.' - Times Higher Education

• Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

  Clare Clarke

Clare Clarke is Assistant Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She specialises in detective fiction and the literature and culture of the late-Victorian era. Her research has been published in CLUES, Women's Writing, and Victorian Literature and Culture.

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