ENG 516BVictorian Crime Fiction

Catalog

ENG 516B Victorian Crime Fiction - Victorians were obsessed with crime. They wanted to know why it happened, who was responsible, and how to control it - but they were also titillated by it, and it became the central feature of some of the most important 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 close look at the social contexts of poverty, disease, "madness," and moral panic that informed those stories.