Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence

Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence PDF Author: L. Frank
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403919321
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Frank investigates an intertextual exchange between nineteenth-century historical disciplines (philology, cosmology, geology archaeology and evolutionary biology) and the detective fictions of Poe, Dickens, and Doyle. In responding to the writings of figures like Lyell, Darwin and E.B. Taylor, detective fiction initiated a transition from scriptural literalism and a prevailing Natural Theology to a naturalistic, secular worldview. In the process, detective fiction sceptically examined both the evidence such disciplines used and their narrative rendering of the world.

Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence

Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence PDF Author: L. Frank
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403919321
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
Frank investigates an intertextual exchange between nineteenth-century historical disciplines (philology, cosmology, geology archaeology and evolutionary biology) and the detective fictions of Poe, Dickens, and Doyle. In responding to the writings of figures like Lyell, Darwin and E.B. Taylor, detective fiction initiated a transition from scriptural literalism and a prevailing Natural Theology to a naturalistic, secular worldview. In the process, detective fiction sceptically examined both the evidence such disciplines used and their narrative rendering of the world.

The Nineteenth Century Periodical Press and the Development of Detective Fiction

The Nineteenth Century Periodical Press and the Development of Detective Fiction PDF Author: Samuel Saunders
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429671024
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
This book re-imagines nineteenth-century detective fiction as a literary genre that was connected to, and nurtured by, contemporary periodical journalism. Whilst ‘detective fiction’ is almost universally-accepted to have originated in the nineteenth century, a variety of widely-accepted scholarly narratives of the genre’s evolution neglect to connect it with the development of a free press. The volume traces how police officers, detectives, criminals, and the criminal justice system were discussed in the pages of a variety of magazines and journals, and argues that this affected how the wider nineteenth-century society perceived organised law enforcement and detection. This, in turn, helped to shape detective fiction into the genre that we recognise today. The book also explores how periodicals and newspapers contained forgotten, non-canonical examples of ‘detective fiction’, and that these texts can help complicate the narrative of the genre’s evolution across the mid- to late nineteenth century.

The Rise of the Detective in Early Nineteenth-Century Popular Fiction

The Rise of the Detective in Early Nineteenth-Century Popular Fiction PDF Author: Heather Worthington
Publisher: Crime Files
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Detective fiction's real origins lurk in the popular press of the early nineteenth century, where the detective and the case were steadily developed. The well-known masters of early crime fiction, including Collins and Dickens, drew on this material, found in texts that have rarely been reprinted or even discussed. Heather Worthington combines scholarly and archival study with theoretically informed analysis to unearth the foundations of detective fiction.

Women Writers and Detectives in Nineteenth-Century Crime Fiction

Women Writers and Detectives in Nineteenth-Century Crime Fiction PDF Author: L. Sussex
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230289401
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This book is a study of the 'mothers' of the mystery genre. Traditionally the invention of crime writing has been ascribed to Poe, Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle, but they had formidable women rivals, whose work has been until recently largely forgotten. The purpose of this book is to 'cherchez les femmes', in a project of rediscovery.

The Mysteries of the Cities

The Mysteries of the Cities PDF Author: Stephen Knight
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786488441
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
A popular crime genre in the nineteenth century, urban mysteries have largely been ignored ever since. This historical and critical text examines the origins of the innovative genre, which grappled with the rise of enormous, anonymous cities, beginning in France in 1842, then spreading rapidly across the continent and to America and Australia. Writers covered include Eugene Sue, George Reynolds, Paul Feval, George Lippard, "Ned Buntline" and Donald Cameron.

Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science

Detective Fiction and the Rise of Forensic Science PDF Author: Ronald R. Thomas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521527620
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This is a book about the relationship between the development of forensic science in the nineteenth century and the invention of the new literary genre of detective fiction in Britain and America. Ronald R. Thomas examines the criminal body as a site of interpretation and enforcement in a wide range of fictional examples, from Poe, Dickens and Hawthorne through Twain and Conan Doyle to Hammett, Chandler and Christie. He is especially concerned with the authority the literary detective manages to secure through the 'devices' - fingerprinting, photography, lie detectors - with which he discovers the truth and establishes his expertise, and the way in which those devices relate to broader questions of cultural authority at decisive moments in the history of the genre. This is an interdisciplinary project, framing readings of literary texts with an analysis of contemporaneous developments in criminology, the rules of evidence, and modern scientific accounts of identity.

Detecting the Nation

Detecting the Nation PDF Author: Caroline Reitz
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 0814209823
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
In Detecting the Nation, Reitz argues that detective fiction was essential both to public acceptance of the newly organized police force in early Victorian Britain and to acclimating the population to the larger venture of the British Empire. In doing so, Reitz challenges literary-historical assumptions that detective fiction is a minor domestic genre that reinforces a distinction between metropolitan center and imperial periphery. Rather, Reitz argues, nineteenth-century detective fiction helped transform the concept of an island kingdom to that of a sprawling empire; detective fiction placed imperialism at the center of English identity by recasting what had been the suspiciously un-English figure of the turn-of-the-century detective as the very embodiment of both English principles and imperial authority. She supports this claim through reading such masters of the genre as Godwin, Dickens, Collins, and Doyle in relation to narratives of crime and empire such as James Mill's History of British India, narratives about Thuggee, and selected writings of Kipling and Buchan. Detective fiction and writings more specifically related to the imperial project, such as political tracts and adventure stories, were inextricably interrelated during this time.

The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century

The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century PDF Author: Otto Penzler
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544302222
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 629

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Book Description
An unparalleled treasury of American 19th century mystery fiction selected and introduced by Otto Penzler.

Nineteenth-Century Suspense From Poe To Conan Doyle

Nineteenth-Century Suspense From Poe To Conan Doyle PDF Author: Clive Bloom
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 134919218X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description


Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation

Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation PDF Author: Andrew Maunder
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351875922
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
Beginning with Victoria's enthronement and an exploration of sensationalist accounts of attacks on the Queen, and ending with the notorious case of a fin-de-siècle killer, Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation throws new light on nineteenth-century attitudes toward crime and 'deviance'. The essays, which draw on both canonical and liminal texts, examine the Victorian fascination with criminal psychology and pathology, engaging with real life cases alongside fictional accounts by writers as diverse as Ainsworth, Stevenson, and Stoker. Among the topics are shifting definitions of criminality and the ways in which discourses surrounding crime changed during the nineteenth century, the literal and social criminalization of particular sex acts, and the gendering of degeneration and insanity. As fascinated as they were with criminality, the Victorians were equally concerned with solving crime, and this collection also focuses on the forces of law enforcement and nineteenth-century attempts to "read" the criminal body as revealed in Victorian crime fiction and reportage. Contributors engage with the detective figure and his growing professionalization, while examining the role of science and technology - both at home and in the Empire - in solving cases.