Full Description
In 1898, The Strand Magazine, one of the most influential publications of the Victorian fin de siècle, deemed best-selling author and editor L.T. Meade a literary "celebrity" and "one of the most industrious writers of modern fiction." Beginning in 1893 and continuing into the first decade of the twentieth century, Meade's medical mysteries and thrilling tales of dangerous criminal women appeared in The Strand. There they competed successfully not only with Arthur Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, but also with the works of the most popular writers of the day. The Sorceress of the Strand is one of Meade's most compelling mysteries, and the first to feature the seductive criminal genius Madame Sara.
The Sorceress of the Strand is accompanied in this edition by three other popular stories featuring powerful female criminal protagonists, from gang leaders to spies and terrorists. The historical appendices expand on the stories' themes of criminality, gender, and political activism. Twenty-eight of the original periodical illustrations are included.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
L.T. Meade: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
Stories from the Diary of a Doctor (second series)
"The Seventh Step"
The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings
"At the Edge of the Crater"
The Heart of a Mystery
"A Little Smoke"
The Sorceress of the Strand
"Madame Sara"
"The Blood-Red Cross"
"The Face of the Abbot"
"The Talk of the Town"
"The Bloodstone"
"The Teeth of the Wolf"
Appendix A: Contemporary Interviews and Reviews
From "Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times of their Lives," Strand Magazine (December 1898)
From L.T. Meade, "How I Began," Girl's Realm (November 1900)
From Sarah A. Tooley, "Some Women Novelists," Woman at Home (1897)
From E.A. Bennett, "The Fiction of Popular Magazines," Fame and Fiction (1901)
Appendix B: Degeneration and Crime
From Gina Lombroso Ferrero, Criminal Man According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso (1911)
From Cesare Lombroso, "Atavism and Evolution," Contemporary Review (July 1895)
From J. Holt Schooling, "Nature's Danger-Signals. A Study of the Faces of Murderers," Harmsworth Magazine (1898-99)
From H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895)
From Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)
From Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907)
Appendix C: Female Offenders
From "The Probable Retrogression of Women," Saturday Review (July 1871)
From Eliza Lynn Linton, "The Wild Women as Social Insurgents," Nineteenth Century (October 1891)
From Cesare Lombroso and William Ferrero, The Female Offender (1895)
"We Want the Vote" (1909)
From Bram Stoker, The Lair of the White Worm (1911)
Appendix D: Anarchism and Terrorism
From "Dynamite Outrages," Times (26 January 1885)
From "Explosion in Greenwich Park," Times (16 February 1894)
From "The Were-Wolf of Anarchy," Punch (23 December 1893)
Appendix E: Crime Fiction
From "Crime in Fiction," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (August 1890)
From Arnold Smith, "The Ethics of Sensational Fiction," Westminster Review (August 1904)
Works Cited and Recommended Reading
