Subjects
Varieties of Women's Sensation Fiction, 1855–1890
General Editor: Andrew Maunder
Consulting Editor: Sally Mitchell
Volume Editors: Tamar Heller, Mark Knight, Graham Law, Andrew Maunder, Lillian Nayder and Lyn Pykett
978 1 85196 771 1: 234x156mm: £495.00/$875.00
With estimated lifetime sales of sixteen million books worldwide, a large personal fortune earned by writing and a devoted public following, Ellen Wood was one of a group of highly successful Victorian writers working at the time of Charles Dickens, William Thackeray and George Eliot. In contrast to these authors however, the work of Wood and her colleagues is almost completely unknown today.
Wood was among a number of women writers who wrote the kind of novels that made murder, incest, bigamy and madness part of the daily diet of respectable middle class women. Sensation novels were extremely popular, but were seen as a corrupting influence by the authorities and were regularly lambasted for their literary style and melodramatic plots. After their initial popularity, these novels fell into relative obscurity and were rarely considered in studies of Victorian literature.
In recent years however, this body of fiction has started to come back into the frame in academic studies of the Victorian novel. If the sensation novels are cut out of the picture it is impossible to gain a true image of what the novel meant to the Victorians, not only the reading public but also in terms of the cross-influences between writers.
This new set from Pickering & Chatto supplies the resource texts required for further study in a modern critical edition. Complete novels are reprinted with annotations and an introduction to each novel. The set features one volume focused exclusively on the sensation debate, with impassioned articles by literary critics, psychologists and the clergy, helping the reader to view the novels in context. This edition requires a place on the shelves of any library seriously concerned with Victorian studies and women’s writing.
- Texts reprinted in full, re-set and annotated
- General Introduction and Introduction to each novel
- Bibliography of sensation novels c.1855-1890
Contents
Volume 1: Sensationalism and the Sensation Debate
‘The Enigma Novel’, Spectator (28 December 1861); Margaret Oliphant, ‘Sensational Novels’, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, 91 (May 1862); ‘The Philosophy Of “Sensation”’, St James’s Magazine, 5 (October 1862); ‘“Lady Audley” On The Stage’, London Review (7 March 1863); [Henry Mansel], ‘Sensation Novels’, Quarterly Review, 113 (April 1863); ‘Sensation’, The Literary Times (9 May, 1863); ‘Sensation Novels’, Medical Critic And Pyschological Journal, 3 (1863); ‘Thackeray And Modern Fiction’, London Quarterly Review, 22 (July 1863); [Henrietta Keddie], ‘A Word Of. Remonstrance With Some Novelists. By A Novelist’, Good Words, 4 (July 1863); ‘Sensation! A Satire’, Dublin University Magazine, 63 (January 1864); ‘The Sensational Williams’, All The Year Round (13 February 1864); ‘Mrs Wood And Miss Braddon’, Littell’s Living Age (14 April 1863); ‘Our Female Sensation Novelists’, Chris tian Remembrancer, 46 (July 1864); [William Thomson], The Archbishop Of York On Works Of Fiction, The Times (2 November 1864); Editorials in response to the Archbishop Of York, The Times (3 and 4 November 1864); [Geraldine Jewsbury], ‘Our Library Table’, Athenaeum (3 December 1864); ‘Works Of Imagination In 1864’, Literary Gazette (14 January 1865); ‘Sensational Literature’, The Chris tian Observer, 335 (November 1865); ‘Tigresses In Literature’, Spectator (10 March 1866); ‘Homicidal Heroines’, Saturday Review (7 April 1866); ‘Novels, Past And Present’, Saturday Review (14 April 1866); [John Richard de Capel Wise], ‘Belles Lettres’, Westminster Review, n.s. 30 (July 1866); ‘Aunt Anastasia On Modern Novels’, Tinsley’s Magazine, 1 (1867); Margaret Oliphant, ‘Novels’, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, 102 (September 1867); ‘A Sermon Upon Novels’, London Review (14 September 1867); George Augustus Sala, ‘The Cant Of Modern Criticism’, Belgravia, 4 (November 1867); [Frederick Paget], Lucretia. The Heroine of the Nineteenth Century. A Correspondence Sensational and Sentimental (1868); ‘Women’s Novels’, The Broadway, n.s. 1 (1868); ‘Peculiarities Of Some Female Novelists’, Pall Mall Gazette ( 13 January 1870 ); ‘Female Novelists Of The Period’, The Period ( 22 January 1870 ); ‘Literary Culture Of The Period’, The Period ( 19 February 1870 ); [E. B.], ‘The Sensation Novel’, The Argosy, 18 (1870); Alfred Austin, ‘Our Novels: The Sensational School’, Temple Bar, 29 (June 1870); William Alexander, Bishop of Derry, ‘Sensationalism’, in Six Sermons Preached on the Sundays after Easter 1874 (1873); ‘Modern Novels’, Cambridge Review, 2 (8 December, 1880)
Volume 2: Domestic Sensationalism
Florence Marryat, Love’s Conflict (1865)
Volume 3: Gothic Sensationalism
Ellen Wood, St. Martin’s Eve (1866) ;
Volume 4: Sensation with a Purpose & Erotic Sensationalism
Felicia Skene, Hidden Depths (1866); Rhoda Broughton, Cometh’ up as a Flower (1867)
Volume 5: Sensation and Detection
Mary Cecil Hay, Old Myddelton's Money (1874)
Volume 6: Newspaper Sensationalism
Dora Russell, Beneath the Wave (1878)
Reviews
'a research tool of considerable value...it can be confidently predicted that future researchers will find it indispensable.'
– Robert Dingley, Australasian Victorian Studies Journal