scholarly journals “THE FASHIONS OF THE CURRENT SEASON”: RECENT CRITICAL WORK ON VICTORIAN SENSATION FICTION

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 461-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Beller
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Wilkie Collins ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Sensation Fiction ◽  
Current Season ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Poet Laureate ◽  
Ellen Wood ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
Sensation Novels

Henry Mansel, writing in 1863, was confident in his prediction that the current popular vogue for sensation novels was an ephemeral phase, soon to pass into a deserved oblivion. Yet by the end of a decade marked by extensive and frequently hysterical debates over the genre, the future Poet Laureate, Alfred Austin, was still bemoaning the ubiquity of sensation fiction: “the world may congratulate itself when the last sensational novel has been written and forgotten” (424). Mansel and Austin would doubtless have been astounded (and appalled) at the current status of mid-Victorian sensation fiction in the realm of academic scholarship. Far from being a long-forgotten, inconsequential moment in literary history, the sensation novels of authors such as Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ellen Wood, and Ouida have prompted a plethora of critical studies, which have impacted on our wider understanding of the dynamics and influences of mid-Victorian literary and publishing practices.

FIGURING OUT THE FASCINATION: RECENT TRENDS IN CRITICISM ON VICTORIAN SENSATION AND CRIME FICTION

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 323-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Knight
Keyword(s):  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Wilkie Collins ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sensation Fiction ◽  
Victorian Studies ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approaches ◽  
British Fiction ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
A Minor

Over the last thirty years or so, sensation fiction has shaken off its scandalous roots to become a respectable area of academic study. The transformation began with the publication of Winifred Hughes's The Maniac in the Cellar (1980) and Patrick Brantlinger's “What Is ‘Sensational’ about the ‘Sensation Novel’?” (1982), and gathered pace in the 1980s and 90s through the contributions of Ann Cvetkovich, Pamela Gilbert, D. A. Miller, Lyn Pykett, and Jenny Bourne Taylor. One of the results of all this scholarly interest is that the genre has begun to attract more introductory works that concentrate on consolidating what others have said. Ideas that were once considered new or controversial are now seen as common knowledge: we know that sensation fiction involves more than the influential novels written in the 1860s by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins; we are familiar with the frequent blurring between sensation fiction and other genres (including crime fiction and the gothic); we are well schooled in interdisciplinary approaches that read sensation fiction alongside science, psychology, and law; and we are used to competing claims for sensation fiction as a subversive or conservative genre. With so much attention being given to a collection of writings once described by Hughes as “irretrievably minor” (167) and by Brantlinger as “a minor subgenre of British fiction” (1), one could be forgiven for thinking that there are few secrets left to be uncovered. Yet, as the wide array of books considered here attests, the critical appeal of sensation fiction and Victorian crime shows no sign of abating. If anything, the first few years of the twenty-first century have seen even greater levels of interest: a number of Victorian Studies conferences have chosen sensation as their theme, and the genre features regularly in the pages of academic journals. Given that the extent of our ongoing fascination would probably have shocked a previous generation of scholars, this review of recent critical trends will try and figure out why the genre possesses such a powerful hold on our thinking and whether or not this hold is likely to continue.

POSSESSING DRESSES: FASHION AND FEMALE COMMUNITY INTHE WOMAN IN WHITE

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 801-816 ◽  
Author(s):  
Casey Sloan
Keyword(s):  
Margaret Oliphant ◽  
Sensation Fiction ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
Female Community ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
Comparative Treatment ◽  
Sensation Novels ◽  
Woman In White

Margaret Oliphant much preferredThe Woman in White(published serially 1859–1860) toGreat Expectations(published serially 1860–1861). This partiality emerges in a comparative treatment of the texts in her oft-quoted 1862 treatise on sensation fiction, and it rests on the desirability of authors producing thrills using “modest and subtle means” (“Sensation Novels” 569) instead of “by fantastic eccentricities” and “high-strained oddity” (“Sensation Novels” 574). While the existence of an argument against the allegedly regrettable excesses of fantastical narratives will not shock any reader familiar with contemporary criticism of sensation fiction, or, for that matter, Romantic-era novels or Gothic works in general, the primary evidence Oliphant uses to argue her case might come as a surprise. In order to discredit Charles Dickens's ghostly accounts of Miss Havisham's bridal tomb in favor of Wilkie Collins's eerie images of Anne Catherick appearing on a moonlit moor, Margaret Oliphant turns to clothing.

The Moonstone

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilkie Collins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Wilkie Collins ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sensation Fiction ◽  
Country House ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Moonstone

‘Who, in the name of wonder, had taken the Moonstone out of Miss Rachel's drawer?’ A celebrated Indian yellow diamond is first stolen from India, then vanishes from a Yorkshire country house. Who took it? And where is it now? A dramatist as well as a novelist, Wilkie Collins gives to each of his narratorsa household servant, a detective, a lawyer, a cloth-eared Evangelical, a dying medical manvibrant identities as they separately tell the part of the story that concerns themselves. One of the great triumphs of nineteenth-century sensation fiction, The Moonstone tells of a mystery that for page after page becomes more, not less inexplicable. Collins's novel of addictions is itself addictive, moving through a sequence of startling revelations towards the final disclosure of the truth. Entranced with double lives, with men and women who only know part of the story, Collins weaves their narratives into a web of suspense. The Moonstone is a text that grows imaginatively out of the secrets that the unconventional Collins was obliged to keep as he wrote the novel.

Literary influence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliette Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
Victorian Novel ◽  
Sensation Fiction ◽  
Literary Influence ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
English Novel ◽  
Sensation Novels ◽  
The Many ◽  
Porous Boundaries

The dangers posed by French novels were not simply moral: they were also literary. Critics throughout the period compulsively listed any indication that a Victorian novel had been influenced by French novelists. The many writers involved with the sensation fiction of the 1860s challenged the purity (both moral and formal) of English novels. Comparisons between sensation novels and their French antecedents led to a reconsideration of the assumed superiority of English life and culture. Sensation novelists did not always proclaim their French inspirations, but many were keen to identify themselves as followers of Balzac, who had set important precedents for the genre, and whose literary star was rising in England. The boundaries of the English novel were further tested by acts of plagiarism committed by novelists like Braddon and Reade; in challenging critics to untangle the composition of their work, they demonstrated the porous boundaries of domestic literary traditions.

scholarly journals The Detective and Sensation Fiction of Wilkie Collins: A Computational Lexical-Semantic Analysis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulfattah Omar
Keyword(s):  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Wilkie Collins ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Sensation Fiction ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Genre Classification ◽  
Textual Content

Theme and genre classifications in the works of Wilkie Collins (1824-89) have been extensively investigated using different literary approaches; these are usually based on textual content and biographical considerations. Different critics place Collins’ works under the two main headings of detective fiction and sensation fiction. Such analyses have been generated by what is referred to as the ‘philological method’; that is, by an individual critic’s reading of the relevant material and their intuitive abstraction of generalizations from that reading. A problem with such an approach is that it is not objective, and it is therefore unreliable. The research question is thus asked in response to the subjectivity of previous genre classifications of the novels of Wilkie Collins and the lack of agreement among literary critics and researchers about such classifications. As such, I ask whether an objective and conceptually useful reading of the themes and subjects of Wilkie Collins’ prose fiction texts can be developed. As thus, computational lexical-semantics is suggested to understand the issues of thematic classification. For this purpose, vector space clustering (VSC) was used for capturing the lexical-semantic features of his novels and linking them explicitly to the relevant themes and genres. It is suggested that through this method, an objective, replicable, and reliable genre classification of Collins’ novels is possible. The results of this study can serve as a basis for future studies and criticisms of Wilkie Collins’ fiction.

Transimperial Negotiations and Cultural Anxieties from the Sensation Novel to the Adventure Story

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Robert McParland ◽  
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Sensation Fiction ◽  
Female Figure ◽  
Adventure Story ◽  
Cultural Measures ◽  
Cultural Anxieties ◽  
Sensation Novel ◽  
Sensation Novels ◽  
Woman In White ◽  
Lady Audley's Secret

The sensation novels of the 1860s expressed the anxieties of the age, challenged realism, and sought to revive wonder. Within the transformations of modernity, these novels were read and exchanged across the British Empire. Sensation fiction mixed romance and realism and its sensational elements reflected modern tensions and concerns. Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret probed the sources of violence, the cultural measures of sanity, and underscored the transgressions of an oppressed female figure in her search for freedom. Wilkie Collins’s Woman in White likewise challenged cultural certainties, as he observed the expanding popular reading audience. The rise of the adventure story within the imperial designs of colonization expressed a sense of mystery and an encounter with otherness that is interrogated here.

scholarly journals National and Comparative Literary Histories in Slovenia: Their Histories, Current Status and Prospects

Slovo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol How to think of literary... ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Juvan
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
The 19Th Century

International audience The article interprets literary history as a discourse involved in the identity policies of nations. From this point of view, the author presents the relations between national and comparative literary history in Slovenia. The paper outlines the origin and development of both disciplines, especially with regard to their implicit or explicit ideological underpinnings–cultural nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Until the end of the 20th century, national literary history as a “great genre” has interiorized the 19th century thrust of cultural nationalism, which also marked the institutionalization of literary historiography as a university discipline after 1919. Even though comparative literature has countered the apparently autarkic national conceptions of literary and cultural development, it produced another kind of “master narratives” through which it affirmed national identity–by providing records on the participation of Slovene literature in the “general European” currents and developmental stages. In this context, the article draws attention to the problem of belatedness of so‑called small literatures, especially in relation to the world literary system. In conclusion, the article addresses current dilemmas of literary historiography in Slovenia, which are partly specific (reticence to attempts to “reform” the discipline) and partly connected with the changes of literature and literary studies in the era of postmodern and globalization. Cet article interprète l’histoire littéraire comme un discours impliqué dans les politiques identitaires des nations. De ce point de vue, l’auteur présente les relations entre l’histoire littéraire nationale et l’histoire littéraire comparée en Slovénie. Sont ainsi mis en lumière l’origine et le développement de ces deux disciplines, en particulier en ce qui concerne leurs fondements idéologiques implicites ou explicites : le nationalisme culturel et le cosmopolitisme. Jusqu’à la fin du xxe siècle, l’histoire littéraire nationale en tant que « grand genre » a intériorisé l’élan du nationalisme culturel du xixe siècle, qui a également marqué l’institutionnalisation de l’historiographie littéraire comme discipline universitaire après 1919. Bien que la littérature comparée ait contré les conceptions nationales apparemment autarciques du développement littéraire et culturel, elle a produit un autre type de « récits maîtres » à travers lesquels elle a affirmé l’identité nationale – en fournissant des documents sur la participation de la littérature slovène aux courants et aux stades de développement « européens généraux ». Dans ce contexte, l’article attire l’attention sur le problème de la tardiveté de ce que l’on appelle les petites littératures, en particulier par rapport au système littéraire mondial. En conclusion, l’article aborde les dilemmes actuels de l’historiographie littéraire en Slovénie, qui sont en partie spécifiques (réticence aux tentatives de « réforme » de la discipline) et en partie liés aux changements de la littérature et des études littéraires à l’ère postmoderne et de la mondialisation. Literarna zgodovina je v tem članku obravnavana kot diskurz, vpleten v identitetne politike narodov. S tega vidika so predstavljena razmerja med nacionalno in primerjalno literarno zgodovino na Slovenskem. Orisan je nastanek in razvoj obeh disciplin, zlasti glede na njuni implicitni ali eksplicitni ideološki podlagi – kulturni nacionalizem in kozmopolitizem. Nacionalne literarne zgodovine kot »veliki žanr« so vse do konca 20. stol. ohranile izvorno podlago kulturnega nacionalizma, značilno za 19. stol. in začetno fazo univerzitetne institucionalizacije te discipline. Toda tudi primerjalna književnost, ki je vsaj od srede 30. let 20. stol. polemizirala z avtarkičnimi pojmovanji slovenskega literarnega in kulturnega razvoja, je oblikovala svoje velike pripovedi, ki pa nacionalno identiteto afirmirajo drugače – prek evidenc o udeleženosti slovenske literature v »splošnoevropskih« tokovih in razvojnih stopnjah. V tem kontekstu članek opozarja na problem zamudništva t. i. malih literatur, zlasti v razmerju do svetovnega literarnega sistema. Na koncu so nakazane aktualne dileme literarnega zgodovinopisja na Slovenskem, ki so deloma specifične (zadržanost do poskusov »reformiranja« stroke), deloma pa povezane s spremembami, ki zadevajo literaturo in vedo o njej v dobi postmoderne in globalizacije.

Sarah Orne Jewett

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Heller
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Mentoring Relationships ◽  
Sarah Orne Jewett ◽  
Local Color ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Serious Injury

Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett (b. 1849–d. 1909) grew up in South Berwick, Maine, the middle daughter of a respected physician, Theodore F. Jewett, and Caroline Perry Jewett, both of distinguished and prosperous local families. Though her locale was provincial, her family connections often took her to Boston, as well as to New York City, Cincinnati, Chicago, and to other parts of the East and Midwest. Graduating in 1865 from the Berwick Academy, Jewett began writing professionally at a young age, appearing in the Atlantic Monthly in 1869. She continued a successful career, writing short fiction and sketches for major magazines and, at regular intervals, publishing collections. She also began to produce more didactic work for adults, as well as stories and poems for children in popular newspapers and magazines, such as The Independent and St. Nicholas. Jewett’s first book, Deephaven (1877), a series of Atlantic sketches worked into a novel, attracted many readers, among them John Greenleaf Whittier, who became a close friend. Her most important friendship was with Annie Fields, wife of the influential publisher, James T. Fields. When Annie was widowed in 1881, not long after Sarah’s father’s death in 1878, the two became lifelong companions, spending about half of each year together at Fields’s two homes in Massachusetts and traveling together in Europe and North America. Fields shared with Jewett her wide acquaintance among contemporary writers and artists. Jewett’s novels and collections sold well during her life; but today, most are in print only as e-books. A Country Doctor (1884) has tended to remain in print and to draw critical interest. “A White Heron” (1886) has remained her best-known short story, frequently anthologized and the focus of many critical studies. Among her longer works, only The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) has had a truly vigorous and continuous following of readers and scholars. Jewett’s fiction-writing career was cut short after a serious injury in a 1902 carriage accident made it impossible to adequately concentrate on writing fiction. However, she continued an extensive correspondence until her death in 1909. In 1908 she began one of the more important mentoring relationships in American literary history: her meetings and letter exchanges with Willa Cather, which critics believe led Cather to give up her successful editing and journalistic career to write the fiction for which she is best remembered. Jewett’s novels and magazine stories were identified from the beginning with local color and regionalist writing. Criticism continues to explore these facets, showing particular interest in how her work participates in the discourses of gender, race, nationalism, and class during the post–Civil War period.

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