Neo-Victorianism and Sensation Fiction, 1st ed. 2019

This book represents the first full-length study of the relationship between neo-Victorianism and nineteenth-century sensation fiction. It examines the diverse and multiple legacies of Victorian popular fiction by authors such as Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, tracing their influence on a range of genres and works, including detective fiction, YA writing, Gothic literature, and stage and screen adaptations. In doing so, it forces a reappraisal of critical understandings of neo-Victorianism in terms of its origins and meanings, as well as offering an important critical intervention in popular fiction studies. The work traces the afterlife of Victorian sensation fiction, taking in the neo-Gothic writing of Daphne du Maurier and Victoria Holt, contemporary popular historical detective and YA fiction by authors including Elizabeth Peters and Philip Pullman, and the literary fiction of writers such as Joanne Harris and Charles Palliser. The work will appeal to scholars and students of Victorian fiction, neo-Victorianism, and popular culture alike.

1. Introduction" The Victorian Sensation Novel: Afterlives and Legacies.- Part I: Reinventing Victorian Popular Fiction: Genre and Neo-Sensationalism.- 2. Neo-Gothic Sensations.- 3. Criminal Sensations: Neo-Victorian Detectives.- 4. Repackaging the Sensation Novel: Neo-Victorian Young Adult Fiction.- Part II: Neo-Sensational Tropes.- 5. (Re)Presenting (Sexual) Trauma.- 6. Excavating the Victorians: Digging Up the Past in the Neo-Sensation Novel.- 7. Sensational Legacies: Tropes of Inheritance.- 8. Conclusion: ‘Substantial Ghosts’: Sensational Continuities and Legacies.

Jessica Cox is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Brunel University London, UK.  She has research interests in Victorian sensation fiction, neo-Victorianism, the Brontës, and the maternal body in nineteenth-century literature and culture, and has published widely in these areas.

The first book to examine the impact of the Victorian sensation novel on contemporary fiction

References texts across media beyond literary works

Examines a broad range of work by well-known authors from Philip Pullman to Audrey Niffenegger