Victorian Crime Fiction

Catalog description

Victorians were obsessed with crime. They wanted to know why it happened, who was responsible, and how to control it - but they were also tantalized by it, and it became the central feature of some of the most important literary genres of the era, like detective fiction and sensation fiction. We’ll read some of the major authors who wrote about crime, from Wilkie Collins to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and we’ll take a look at the social contexts that inform those stories, touching on the British Empire, London slums, lunacy panics, penal colonies, disease outbreaks, and more. Offered regularly.