Victorian Sensation Fiction: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism (review)

This concise introduction to the body of critical work on the nineteenth-century genre of sensation fiction from its heyday in the 1860s to the present day offers a comprehensive guide for students and academics. The first chapter, "The Rise, Fall and Revival of Sensation Fiction," gives a broad overview of the mass-market appeal of sensation novels and the controversy they caused by discussion of commentaries by Geraldine Jewsbury, Margaret Oliphant, and George Eliot, whilst the generous quotes from the nineteenth-century sources give a real flavour of the mainstream periodicals, such as the Quarterly Review and the Contemporary Review, in which such reviews first appeared. Radford's meticulous research directs readers to lesser-known sources and viewpoints, giving a broader selection than is sometimes used by other scholars: commentaries on women and gender from Mary Elizabeth Braddon's magazine Belgravia and an 1870 edition of The Period are also included. The clear explanations of contemporary anxieties about popular fiction and its transgressive heroines are carefully interwoven with discussions of critical appreciations of the genre in the twentieth century and beyond, which illuminates the development of critical debates about the impact of the fiction; its representations of crime, domesticity, race and gender; and, perhaps most interestingly, the way in which it was marketed to readers of periodicals through serialization. As the guide makes clear, the groundbreaking work of critics such as Winifred Hughes, Elaine Showalter, and Lyn Pykett paved the way for other scholars who have paid increasing attention to the marketplace for Victorian popular fiction, such as Deborah Wynne, Graham Law, Jennifer Phegley, and Andrew Maunder.

This series is also to be recommended for its detailed bibliographies, invaluable for both new and established researchers. The guide also crystallises useful approaches to the genre—the "depiction of transgression" is highlighted as one of the "most crucial" research questions (p. 33)—as well as projecting new directions for research. The conclusion ends with a timely reminder of the "vibrant" work of historians of the periodical press in uncovering the publishing practices of key authors such as Wilkie Collins or Braddon. As Maunder notes: "as our knowledge of how [sensation fiction] was written, published, received and consumed increases, so our sense of what it encompasses will continue to fracture" (p. 171).