The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction Cambridge Companions to Literature Series

In 1859 the popular novelist Wilkie Collins wrote of a ghostly woman, dressed from head to toe in white garments, laying her cold, thin hand on the shoulder of a young man as he walked home late one evening. His novel The Woman in White became hugely successful and popularised a style of writing that came to be known as sensation fiction. This Companion highlights the energy, the impact and the inventiveness of the novels that were written in 'sensational' style, including the work of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood and Florence Marryat. It contains fifteen specially-commissioned essays and includes a chronology and a guide to further reading. Accessible yet rigorous, this Companion questions what influenced the shape and texture of the sensation novel, and what its repercussions were both in the nineteenth century and up to the present day.

Introduction Andrew Mangham; 1. Sensation in the 1850s Anne-Marie Beller; 2. Sensation fiction and the gothic Laurence Talairach-Vielmas; 3. Illustrating the sensation novel Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge; 4. Sensation fiction on stage Andrew Maunder; 5. Queering the sensation novel Richard Nemesvari; 6. The contemporary response to sensation fiction Janice M. Allan; 7. Sensation, class and the rising professionals Mariaconcetta Constantini; 8. Sensation fiction, empire and the Indian Mutiny Saverio Tomaiuolo; 9. Sensation fiction, gender and identity Tara MacDonald; 10. Sensation fiction, spiritualism and the supernatural Tatiana Kontou; 11. Science and sensation Lillian Nayder; 12. Sensation fiction and the publishing industry Graham Law; 13. Sensation fiction and the medical context Pamela K. Gilbert; 14. Sensation fiction and the New Woman Greta Depledge; 15. The sensation legacy Lyn Pykett.

Dr Andrew Mangham is Lecturer in Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Reading. He is the author of Violent Women and Sensation Fiction: Crime, Medicine and Victorian Popular Culture (2007).