Five 'sensation' novels are here presented complete and fully reset, along with scholarly annotation, a bibliography of 'sensation' fiction and articles contributing to contemporary debate.

Five 'sensation' novels are here presented complete and fully reset, along with scholarly annotation, a bibliography of 'sensation' fiction and articles contributing to contemporary debate.

Five 'sensation' novels are here presented complete and fully reset, along with scholarly annotation, a bibliography of 'sensation' fiction and articles contributing to contemporary debate.

The Female Servant and Sensation Fiction: 'Kitchen Literature' explores why Victorian sensation fiction was derided as literature fit only for maids and cooks and how the depictions of fictional female domestics, from Jane Eyre to Neo-Victorian novels, reflect contemporary social concerns about the blurring of the boundaries of class and gender.

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.

The Ambivalent Detective in Victorian Sensation Novels studies how the detective as a literary character evolved through the mid-nineteenth century in England, as seen in sensation novels. In contrast to most assumptions about the English detective, Yoon argues that the detective was more often tolerated than admired following the establishment of professional detectives in the London Metropolitan Police Force in 1842. Through studying the historical and literary contexts between the 1840s to the 1860s, Yoon argues that the detective was seen as a suspicious, even mistrusted and disdained, figure who was nonetheless viewed as necessary to combat rising levels of crime. The detective as a literary character responded to the often contradictory values and aspirations of the middle class, representing an independent masculinity and laying claim to scientific authority. This study surveys novels by Charles Dickens, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and Wilkie Collins, alongside lesser-known writers like William Russell, James Redding Ware (pseudonym Andrew Forrester), and William Stephens Hayward. This book contributes to the study of mid-nineteenth-century Victorian culture and connects with broader studies of the detective fiction genre.

This book brings new perspectives to the study of sensation fiction in the Victorian period. It examines Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ellen Wood, and Florence Marryat's magazines alongside their fiction to explore the self-conscious and complex ways they used sensation to re-work contemporary notions of female agency.