Late Victorian Crime Fiction in the Shadows of Sherlock [Hardcover]

This book investigates the development of crime fiction in the 1880s and 1890s, challenging studies of late-Victorian crime fiction which have given undue prominence to a handful of key figures and have offered an over-simplified analytical framework, thereby overlooking the generic, moral, and formal complexities of the nascent genre.Introduction 1. 'Ordinary Secret Sinners': Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). 2. 'The most popular book of modern times': Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886). 3. 'L'homme c'est rien - l'oeuvre c'est tout': the Sherlock Holmes stories and work. 4. Something for 'the silly season': Policing and the Press in Israel Zangwill's The Big Bow Mystery (1891). 5. Tales of 'mean streets': the criminal-detective in Arthur Morrison's The Dorrington Deed-Box (1897). 6. A Criminal in Disguise': class and empire in Guy Boothby's A Prince of Swindlers (1897). Conclusion Works Cited Index

'This rigorous and passionate book will make you want to sprint to Project Gutenberg in search of the texts, as well as give you a keen appreciation of just why Victorian magazine editors vied to find the next Arthur Conan Doyle.' - Times Higher Education

Clare Clarke is Assistant Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She specialises in detective fiction and the literature and culture of the late-Victorian era. Her research has been published in CLUES, Women's Writing, and Victorian Literature and Culture.

Winner of the HRF Keating Award 2015