The Nineteenth Century Periodical Press and the Development of Detective Fiction

257 Pages·2021·12.476 MB·English

by  Samuel Saunders

The Nineteenth Century Periodical Press
and the Development of Detective Fiction
This book re-imagines nineteenth-century detective fiction as a literary genre
that was connected to, and nurtured by, contemporary periodical journalism.
Whilst ‘detectivefiction’isalmost 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
justicesystem werediscussedinthepagesofavarietyofmagazinesandjournals,
and argues that this affected how the wider nineteenth-century society perceived
organisedlawenforcementanddetection.This,inturn,helpedtoshapedetective
fiction into the genre that we recognise today. The book also explores how peri-
odicalsandnewspaperscontainedforgotten,non-canonicalexamplesof‘detective
fiction’, and that these texts can help complicate the narrative of the genre’s
evolution across the mid- to late nineteenth century.
Samuel Saunders holds a PhD in English from Liverpool John Moores Uni-
versity, which he obtained in 2018 after defending a thesis that examined nine-
teenth-century crime and detective fiction and its connections with Victorian
journalism and print culture. He has published research in numerous peer-
reviewed journals such as the Journal of Popular Culture, the Wilkie Collins
Journal, Law, Crime and History, and the journal of the Open Library of the
Humanities, andhas co-edited a collection on sidekicks in crime fiction. Samuel
has taught English at both LJMU and the University of Chester, has acted as a
guest professor for the Ohio State University, and is a Fellow of the Higher
Education Academy (FHEA).
Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature
Titles include:
“Music Makers” and World Creators
The Forms and Functions of Embedded Poems in British Fantasy Narratives
Michaela Hausmann
The Bohemian Republic
Transnational Literary Networks in the Nineteenth Century
James Gatheral
The Nineteenth Century Revis(it)ed
The New Historical Fiction
Ina Bergmann
Jane Austen and Literary Theory
Shawn Normandin
Robert Seymour and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture
Sketches by Seymour and Comic Illustration
Brian Maidment
Victorian Pets and Poetry
Kevin A. Morrison
The Nineteenth Century Periodical Press and the Development of Detective
Fiction
Samuel Saunders
Doctrine and Difference
Readings in Classic American Literature
Michael J. Colacurcio
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Studies-in-Nineteenth-Century-Literature/book-series/RSNCL
The Nineteenth Century
Periodical Press and the
Development of Detective Fiction
Samuel Saunders
Firstpublished2021
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Contents
List of figures ix
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: Victorian Policing and Victorian Periodicals 1
PART I
Policing and Crime in Periodicals 29
1 Periodical Discourse on Policing: c. 1850–1875 31
2 A Condemned Cell with a View: Crime Journalism c. 1750–1880 68
PART II
Memoirs and Sensation 91
3 ‘“Detective” literature, if it may be so called’: The Police Officer
and the Police Memoir 93
4 The Romance of the Detective: Police Memoir Fiction and
Sensation Fiction 133
PART III
From Scandal to the Strand Magazine 165
5 ‘…people are naturally distrustful of its future working’: The 1877
Detective Scandal in the Victorian Mass Media 167
viii Contents
6 From ‘Handsaw’ to Holmes: Police Officers and Detectives in Late
Victorian Journalism 195
Conclusion 238
Index 241
Figures
1.1 ‘The Idiot Detective, or, the Track! The Trial! and the Triumph!’ 54
2.1 ‘Criminal Record’ 72
3.1 Isaac Richard and George Cruikshank, ‘Symptoms of the Finish of
“Some Sorts of Life” in London. Tom, Jerry and Logic in the Press
Yard at Newgate’ 96
3.2 George Cruikshank, ‘Fagin in the Condemned Cell’ 99
4.1 ‘Phiz’ (Hablot Knight Browne), ‘The Night’ 149
5.1 Original illustration of Jack Ketch reused in later material 171
5.2 ‘The Idiot Detective, or, the Track! The Trial! and the Triumph!’ 174
5.3 ‘The Great Detective Case – Trial at the Central Criminal Court’ 182
6.1 ‘Violet’s Valentine, or, the Undetected Detective’ 204
6.2 ‘Adventures of our Own Private Detective’ 205
6.3 ‘AnimalActualities,IX:SaucefortheGoose,SaucefortheGander’ 219
6.4 ‘AnimalActualities,IX:SaucefortheGoose,SaucefortheGander’ 221