Critical Survey

Written in 2005 – at which point research into sensation fiction was seen to have reached a ‘crossroads’ – the sentiments expressed by Andrew Maunder resonated widely with those working within the field. Thanks, in part, to the work of Maunder himself, we have made considerable progress in effecting this ‘shift’, not simply in our thinking, but also in the subject of thought. I have in mind here his six volume collection, Varieties of Women’s Sensation Fiction: 1855–1890 (2004) which, together with the scholarly editions published by Broadview Press, Valancourt Books, and, most recently, Victorian Secrets, has served to broaden substantially the field of study and alert us to the breadth and diversity of the genre as a whole. For many of us, myself included, Maunder’s collection represented the first opportunity to read the novels of such ‘forgotten’ sensationalists as Florence Marryat, Felicia Skene, Mary Cecil Hay, and Dora Russell. The fruit of such recovery work has been evident in a number of recent publications, such as Kimberley Harrison and Richard Fantina’s Victorian Sensations: Essays on a Scandalous Genre (2006), as well as a range of journal articles, most obviously those published by Women’s Writing, that move us beyond sensationalism’s most famous triptych of texts.

Concentrating on Ellen Wood's Parkwater, a little-known New Monthly Magazine serial, this article attempts to complicate the long-standing construction of Wood as a 'quiet sensationalist'. It argues that Wood's serial was self-consciously appealing to the New Monthly's male readers and thus incorporated scenes and details of a surprisingly graphic nature. At the same time, the article situates the narrative within the context of a new commodity culture, as well as the 1857 murder trial of Madeleine Smith, suggesting that Wood's exploration of deceptive femininity resonates with current events in a particularly insistent manner.

This article examines Margaret Oliphant's Salem Chapel (1863), the author's only foray into the sensation genre. It argues that the novel's focus on the dangers of gossip and public exposure reveals Oliphant's fraught relationship with sensationalism. Two key characters represent sensational readers and authors in the novel: Arthur Vincent and Adelaide Tufton. By emphasising their eager, voyeuristic desires for sensation, Oliphant marks such modes of reading and interpretation - and the genres which encourage such desires - as problematic. The novel also constructs gossip and public media as troubling, and thus questions sensationalism's reliance on voyeuristic thrills.

In 1868 Florence Marryat published Nelly Brooke: A Homely Tale, ostensibly a novel full of classic sensation themes: illegitimacy, love, seduction, addiction, and a murder of sorts. More interestingly, however, the novel also plays with nineteenth-century gender expectations and ideas current in medical and scientific discourse. This essay explores the representations of male hysteria and the demonised man of science which this novel depicts. These themes, contained within a hugely satisfying sensation plot, are also offset against the plight of the fortuneless woman in the nineteenth-century marriage market.

Reading Rhoda Broughton's fourth novel Good-bye, Sweetheart! (1872) as a revision of Germaine de Staël's Corinne (1807), this essay examines Broughton's depiction of the exceptional woman who tragically defies the gender norms of her day. Like Staël's famous improvisatrice, Broughton's rebellious heroine Lenore Herrick dies heartbroken after her fiancé discards her to marry a more docile girl. Significantly, however, Broughton's Victorian protagonist is even more disempowered than her Romantic predecessor; lacking an artistic career like Corinne, Lenore is, finally, a rebel without a cause.

This article examines the role of the sensation novel in the construction of male identities in the Victorian period through an examination of Charles Reade's A Simpleton, a Story of the Day (1873). This novel exploits Victorian anxieties surrounding male identity and seeks to affirm unstable concepts of masculinity through dominant codes of imperialism. O'Brien Hill argues that Reade's novel is unusual in the sensation canon due to the combination of the adventure sub-plot and sensational narrative devices, serving to expose the fluidity of male identity and Victorian fascination with the spectacle of masculinity in crisis.

This article examines women's mobility in the work of Rhoda Broughton, looking closely at her use of the railway as a means of rendering not only the movement but also the drifting consciousness of her heroines. Combining privacy and publicity, movement and stasis, the railway in Broughton's work affects the subjectivity and everyday routine of women, becoming a literary means of exploring woman's complex response to the transitory nature of experience, the rapidly shifting states of consciousness, and modernity's fleeting images - all of which are reflected in Broughton's idiosyncratic style.

The Question by SCOTT KELLY

The Herriers Frog City A Visit by GERRY CAMBRIDGE

Yes Its True... Just Shrink Your Dreams To Fit by RENNIE PARKER

Notes on contributors