Description
This book represents the first full-length study of the relationship between neo-Victorianism and nineteenth-century sensation fiction. It examines the diverse and multiple legacies of Victorian popular fiction by authors such as Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, tracing their influence on a range of genres and works, including detective fiction, YA writing, Gothic literature, and stage and screen adaptations. In doing so, it forces a reappraisal of critical understandings of neo-Victorianism in terms of its origins and meanings, as well as offering an important critical intervention in popular fiction studies. The work traces the afterlife of Victorian sensation fiction, taking in the neo-Gothic writing of Daphne du Maurier and Victoria Holt, contemporary popular historical detective and YA fiction by authors including Elizabeth Peters and Philip Pullman, and the literary fiction of writers such as Joanne Harris and Charles Palliser. The work will appeal to scholars and students of Victorian fiction, neo-Victorianism, and popular culture alike.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction" The Victorian Sensation Novel: Afterlives and Legacies.- Part I: Reinventing Victorian Popular Fiction: Genre and Neo-Sensationalism.- 2. Neo-Gothic Sensations.- 3. Criminal Sensations: Neo-Victorian Detectives.- 4. Repackaging the Sensation Novel: Neo-Victorian Young Adult Fiction.- Part II: Neo-Sensational Tropes.- 5. (Re)Presenting (Sexual) Trauma.- 6. Excavating the Victorians: Digging Up the Past in the Neo-Sensation Novel.- 7. Sensational Legacies: Tropes of Inheritance.- 8. Conclusion: ‘Substantial Ghosts’: Sensational Continuities and Legacies.
