Sensation fiction

[DWilly]

I was wondering what types of books Lizzie may have been reading in the 1890s. I know she liked Dickens and in the archives there's a post that quotes Pearson as saying she liked some sort of romance stories too. Anyway, I thought if we knew more about her tastes in entertainment we might gain some insight into Lizzie. Well, I went zipping around the internet and found out that during her time something called "Sensation Fiction" became quite popular. Very trashy but fun dectective type stories. If Lizzie read any of these books she may have had some idea of what the Police or a detective might look for. Here's part of an article I found and here's where I found it:


http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/Vi ... Crime.html



Wilkie Collins and the Sensation Novel

Yet although the official detective had made a literary appearance, the rise of a new form of crime fiction after the mid-century put the emphasis firmly on the amateur sleuth and, at times, back onto the criminal. The 'sensation novel' rose to prominence in the 1860s as a genre of what Kathleen Tillotson has described as the 'novel-with-a-secret.' (xv) Although such secrets were not necessarily criminal ones their unravelling often involved a degree of criminal activity which, while not always central to the narrative, helped to make the novel all the more 'sensational'; for instance, the murder story in Mrs Henry Wood's East Lynne (1861) acts as a sub-plot to the adventures of Isabel Vane. The name 'sensation novel' has itself been the focus of much speculation; one reason for the genre's name is the intention of the texts themselves in provoking a physical reaction (as Edmund Yates said of The Woman in White, Collins intended to inspire 'the creepy effect, as of pounded ice dropped down the back.' (Sweet xvi)), although other critics have proposed complementary theories. Thomas Boyle points to the use of the word 'sensation' in contemporary reports of trials, associating the term with the vicarious thrill of criminality, while Ann Cvetkovich suggests that the name can also apply to the phenomenal success of the genre - a real literary sensation.

Although East Lynne was one of the most popular novels of the later nineteenth century, the genre of sensation fiction was dominated by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins. Braddon's earlier novels, in particular Three Times Dead (1860) and Lady Audley's Secret (1862) presented narratives of crime and detection, but it was Collins who not only inaugurated the sensation sub-genre but delineated a closer relationship between it and detective fiction. The Woman in White is considered to be the first of the sensation novels, but his later work would indicate a move towards detective fiction. The Moonstone, published in 1868 (coincidentally, the year of the final public hanging in Britain), employed many of the techniques of sensation fiction, but was more oriented towards the solving of a central puzzle. Whereas the mystery of earlier sensation fiction had often been concerned with an undefined 'secret' (as in Lady Audley's Secret, where the mystery surrounding Lady Audley is as important as the disappearance of George Talboys), The Moonstone represents a shift towards detective fiction in that the mystery was clearly defined. A later novel, The Law and the Lady (1875), made the shift even more apparent by hinting at a 'secret' (What is Eustace Woodville concealing from his wife?) which was revealed halfway through the first volume; the rest of the novel followed a more conventional pattern of literary detection. The detective in that novel, Valeria Woodville, was an amateur (and furthermore, an early female detective); but The Moonstone hints at the role of the police detective in future crime fiction in the character of Sergeant Cuff. Cuff, however, is an ultimately ineffectual detective and, as Stephen Knight has argued, emphasises the contemporary role of the official detective as the employee of whoever wanted the mystery solved rather than the independent restorer of order.

The Popular Genre

By the last fifteen years of Victoria's reign, detective fiction had become established as a genre in its own right, and one with a huge readership; as the Graphic noted in a review of Reginald Barrett's 1888 novel Police-Sergeant C21, this work presented 'a tale of criminal investigation, which will be welcomed by those - and they are many - who delight in that form of fiction'. The review was generally favourable towards Barrett's novel (considering that the Graphic could often be scathing in its appraisal of similar works), comparing it to the work of the popular French detective author Emile Gaboriau. Yet the novel failed to make the impact of another tale of criminal investigation published in Britain in the previous year: The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume, a British lawyer who had emigrated to New Zealand before settling in Melbourne, the novel's setting. Similarly influenced by Gaboriau's bestselling stories, Hume published his novel himself after numerous rejections (not, perhaps, without a hint of imperialist inverted snobbery - as Julian Symons notes, Australian publishers turned down the book in the belief that 'no Colonial could write anything worth reading' (60)). The novel was an immediate success, although not even Hume could have foreseen the extent of the novel's popularity when he sold the rights to the book for £50. It was thus the publishers, the newly formed 'Hansom Cab Publishing Company', which took the considerable profits from British sales figures of 375,000 by 1898. Hume's third novel, Madame Midas (1888), although using some of the characters and settings from Hansom Cab, failed to make the same impact. Although his first novel had not been well received critically, Madame Midas was dismissed even more peremptorily; 'The style in which it is written is beneath contempt' was the parting shot of the review in the Graphic. The prolific Hume wrote a further hundred and thirty five novels up to his death in 1932, encompassing the genres of science fiction and adventure as well as detection, but none enjoyed the success of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.

Although the publication of detective novels did not dwindle in the final decade of the nineteenth century, modern studies of the genre tend to identify this period as the 'golden age' of the short story of detection, reflected in such anthologies as Marie B Smith's Golden Age Detective Stories (locating that period firmly at the end of the nineteenth century), and Hugh Greene's trio of collections under the title of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. The ethos behind this latter collection is interesting, as the characterisation of the fin de siecle as the age of the short story of detection is in no small part the work of The Strand Magazine. The Strand was launched in 1891 by George Newnes, an editor who had already experienced considerable commercial success with the periodical Tit-Bits. Newnes' acute business sense, combined with a kind of public paternalism (perhaps best exemplified in the 'Tit-Bits Insurance Scheme', whereby the next-of-kin of anybody killed in a railway accident could claim insurance if the deceased had had a copy of Newnes' magazine with them), suggested that the new magazine was guaranteed at least a degree of success, as well as providing the reading public with what Newnes described in the first issue as 'cheap, healthful literature'. Such literature included regular 'Illustrated Interviews', 'Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times of their Lives' (with a significant emphasis on illustrations, as a display of publishing ability) - and detective stories. The first issue, surprisingly, was without fictitious crime (although it included an article entitled 'A Night with the Thames Police'), but by the second number Grant Allen had provided the Strand's first detective story, 'Jerry Stokes'. Later in 1891, Conan Doyle began the series 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes', presenting the first short stories of the detective he had introduced in Mrs Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887.

Doyle's contribution to detective fiction is well known, and the Holmes formula was imitated by other contributors to the Strand, especially Arthur Morrison and his series 'Martin Hewitt, Investigator' (1894). Two more authors made a significant contribution to detective fiction in the Strand. The first of these, Grant Allen, had already provided the magazine with its first detective story. However, he continued contributing to the detective stories the magazine required with a number of series of stories: 'An African Millionaire' concerned the hunt for the villainous master of disguise Colonel Clay; while Allen wrote two series of stories featuring female detectives, 'Miss Cayley's Adventures', and 'Hilda Wade', the latter being a nurse by profession. This combination of detection and medical discourse was particularly evident in the Strand, and especially in the many series of stories written by L T Meade with a number of collaborators. Her first two series, 'Adventures from the Diary of a Doctor,' featured Dr. Halifax as their protagonist, and indeed the second series would be written in conjunction with Clifford Halifax, MD. Although not all the entries in this series were strictly detective stories, the connection of crime with disease emphasised a growing discourse of crime as disease.

The work of criminal anthropologists such as Cesare Lombroso and Havelock Ellis towards the end of the nineteenth century located the tendency to criminality in the body, and even literary and artistic criticism such as Max Nordau's Degeneration (1892) fuelled fears that if Darwinian evolution could go forward, it could also go backwards. The criminal became a throwback to a more savage age, and crime itself became a social disease to be treated by the doctor detective.

[Harry]

Thanks for the interesting post DWilly! From what I have read Lizzie's tastes tended toward the classics or romantic leaning books.

The Evening Standard reprinted an article that appeared in the Aug. 22, 1892 N.Y. World covering an interview with author Anne Katherine Green. Mrs. Green was the author of "The Leavenworth Case" published in 1878.

"'The Leavenworth Case' has frequently been criticized as utterly improbable, yet when I read the story of the Borden murder I remarked to my husband, 'What a remarkable resemblance to the Leavenworth Case!'
"In the first place, the victims of the Fall River murder and the Leavenworth case had no enemies; they were wealthy; they were both on the point of changing their wills; there were two to benefit or suffer by this action; to all appearances they were perfectly secure; both crimes were committed in a remarkably short space of time, with the regular inmates of the house within call at the time.
"The discovery of both crimes was by accident---and both were committed noiselessly.
"The pistol shot in the Leavenworth case was not heard by the inmates of the house; nor was Mrs. Borden's fall, though she weighed over 200 pounds, and from the position in which she lay when discovered must have fallen heavily.
"The mysterious man who was hired to say on the stoop, 'He has deeply wronged me', bears a remarkably close analogy to Clavering in the Leavenworth case.
"Then the circumstantial evidence, such as it is, in the Borden case has many parallels in the Leavenworth case. The servant girl, Hannah, in my story had left the house just about the way Bridget Sullivan did, thus drawing suspicion upon herself. Then, too, there was the contradictory theories of the detectives and their effort after they had singled out the most probably guilty one to bolster up by such evidence as came most readily to hand.
"Afterwards came all the impenetrable mystery.
"In the Leavenworth case the first one to announce the crime was Truman Harwell, the real culprit, who at times could seem to have no possible motive for its commission."
"Her character, as I have understood it from the published reports, is thoroughly womanly, and there is no doubt in my mind as to her thorough sanity. I do not see how the circumstantial evidence that has been brought forward justifies the conclusions reached.
"But while it is reasonable to suppose that Lizzie Borden is innocent, both directly or as an accomplice, yet she might have inferential or indirect knowledge of the crime sufficient to cause at least a suspicion in her mind as to who might be implicated. That would readily account for her seemingly contradictory evidence on the stand.
"The resemblance between my fiction and this deplorable fact is heightened by the possibility of some unknown sympathizer committing the crime on his own responsibility for some motive but half formed in his mind and acted on without regard to anybody or anything---impelled by no stronger motive that might have led a fanatic to commit the crime and conceal the method with the cunning of an insane mind. I mean the kind of mind whose acuteness in one direction is enhanced to the sacrifice of the governing moral faculties.
"The inexperienced in crime, inspired by some engrossing idea, will frequently proceed in a way entirely at variance with that of the habitual and hardened criminal, and of course involve the affair in mystery from their very ignorance of crime and criminal methods.
"If I were weaving this into a story I would try to establish a strong relationship between the known family members of the inmates of the house and some deeply interested party outside. You see this would furnish me with excellent material for fastening the circumstantial evidence on anyone I saw fit to cast under suspicion."

Hmmmm....wonder if Lizzie read it.

Bookfinder.com has one copy of "The Leavenworth Case" for sale, provided you are willing to shell out $474.95. I'll pass.

[Kat]

I have Lady Audley's Secret by Braddon, and have gone thru every Wilke Collins I could get my hands on. Collins' books are wonderful.
For me they evoke the old days.
I guess in that time and place they were innovative- I just think now it's demmed fine writing!

[mbhenty]

Yes, KAT: Should really sit and read Wilke Collins. Have a friend who has and says he is very readable, even for our time. I have a first edtition of "The Women in White," somewhere on my shelf. Been sitting there for 25 years or so........but, collecting books as a hobby, One becomes more obsessed with "the collecting" and forgets about "the reading".

As I tell friends when they look to my shelves and ask, "have you read all these books?" And I ask, "Does a stamp collector use his collection on his mail? Does a coin collector use his coins to shop? Of course I don't read them."

Of course I have read many in my collection in whole or in part, but it is one of the faults behind a hobbyest's obsession; you chase it down, bring it home, caress it, place it on your shelf, then run off to look for your next treasure, planning to read your last find at a future date, which at times never comes.

[Susan]

I recall seeing a BBC movie entitled The Woman in White years ago, I wonder if it was based on Collin's book? The main characters were like half sisters and the crazed woman of the title. I do know the book has been made into a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber which opened to mixed reviews. The main gist of them was skip the play and read the book, I will have to check for it next time I go to the library.

[william]

Susan:

There have been a host of movies about this novel - check the Internet Movie Data Base for a complete listing.

[Susan]

Thank you, William, I'll have to check into it. Have you seen any of them yourself? If so, did one strike you as better than the others?

[RayS]

Wasn't that era the hayday of the Dime Novel and western stories, also the Horatio Alger fantasies? Someone w/ advanced degree in Literature may be able to tell.

Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage" was a best-seller.