The sinister Madame Sara is back! This new edition of the classic crime novel is the first reprint of the complete six-chapter serial for the first time over a hundred years. Get ready to meet the most dangerous woman in England!

Concentrating on works by authors such as Fergus Hume, Arthur Conan Doyle, Grant Allen, L.T. Meade, and Marie Belloc Lowndes, Christopher Pittard explores the complex relation between the emergence of detective fictions in the 1880s and 1890s and the concept of purity. The centrality of material and moral purity as a theme of the genre, Pittard argues, both reflected and satirised a contemporary discourse of degeneration in which criminality was equated with dirt and disease and where national boundaries were guarded against the threat of the criminal foreigner. Situating his discussion within the ideologies underpinning George Newnes's Strand Magazine as well as a wide range of nonfiction texts, Pittard demonstrates that the genre was a response to the seductive and impure delights associated with sensation and gothic novels. Further, Pittard suggests that criticism of detective fiction has in turn become obsessed with the idea of purity, thus illustrating how a genre concerned with policing the impure itself became subject to the same fear of contamination. Contributing to the richness of Pittard's project are his discussions of the convergence of medical discourse and detective fiction in the 1890s, including the way social protest movements like the antivivisectionist campaigns and medical explorations of criminality raised questions related to moral purity.

Framed uses fin de siècle British crime narrative to pose a highly interesting question: why do female criminal characters tend to be alluring and appealing while fictional male criminals of the era are unsympathetic or even grotesque? In this elegantly argued study, Elizabeth Carolyn Miller addresses this question, examining popular literary and cinematic culture from roughly 1880 to 1914 to shed light on an otherwise overlooked social and cultural type: the conspicuously glamorous New Woman criminal. In so doing, she breaks with the many Foucauldian studies of crime to emphasize the genuinely subversive aspects of these popular female figures. Drawing on a rich body of archival material, Miller argues that the New Woman Criminal exploited iconic elements of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century commodity culture, including cosmetics and clothing, to fashion an illicit identity that enabled her to subvert legal authority in both the public and the private spheres. "This is a truly extraordinary argument, one that will forever alter our view of turn-of-the-century literary culture, and Miller has demonstrated it with an enrapturing series of readings of fictional and filmic criminal figures. In the process, she has filled a gap between feminist studies of the New Woman of the 1890s and more gender-neutral studies of early twentieth-century literary and social change. Her book offers an extraordinarily important new way to think about the changing shape of political culture at the turn of the century." ---John Kucich, Professor of English, Rutgers University "Given the intellectual adventurousness of these chapters, the rich material that the author has brought to bear, and its combination of archival depth and disciplinary range, any reader of this remarkable book will be amply rewarded." ---Jonathan Freedman, Professor of English and American Culture, University of Michigan Elizabeth Carolyn Miller is Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Davis. digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.

L. T. Meade was the pseudonym of Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1854-1914), a prolific writer of girls stories in late 19th century England. Her most famous book was, A World of Girls, published in 1886. She was also the editor of a popular girl's magazine Atlanta. She also co-authored a number of notable mystery novels with Robert Eustace. Eustace Robert Barton (1854-1943), was a British physician who also wrote medico-legal thrillers under the pseudonym Robert Eustace. He often wrote in collaboration, particularly with L. T. Meade. With Meade his works include: A Master of Mysteries (1898), The Gold Star Line (1899), The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (1899), The Arrest of Captain Vandeleur (1899), The Outside Ledge (1900), The Man Who Disappeared (1901), The Last Square (1902) and The Stolen Pearl (1903). He also co-authored The Tea Leaf (1925) with Edgar Jepson and The Documents in the Case (1930) with Dorothy L. Sayers.

This book is a no-apologies introduction to Detective Fiction. It's written in an aggressive, modern English well-suited to a genre which has traditionally broken ground in terms of aggressive writing, contemporary scenarios, and tough dialogue.

A wonderfully wicked new anthology from the editor of The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime It is the Victorian era and society is both entranced by and fearful of that suspicious character known as the New Woman. She rides those new- fangled bicycles and doesn't like to be told what to do. And, in crime fiction, such female detectives as Loveday Brooke, Dorcas Dene, and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard are out there shadowing suspects, crawling through secret passages, fingerprinting corpses, and sometimes committing a lesser crime in order to solve a murder. In The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime, Michael Sims has brought together all of the era's great crime-fighting females- plus a few choice crooks, including Four Square Jane and the Sorceress of the Strand.

From a writer of astonishing versatility and erudition, the much-admired literary critic, novelist, short-story writer, and scholar (“Dazzling”—The Washington Post; “One of those rare writers who seems to be able to work on any register, any time, any atmosphere, and make it her own” —The Observer), a book that explores the little-known literary tradition of love between women in Western literature, from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Agatha Christie, and many more. Emma Donoghue brings to bear all her knowledge and grasp to examine how desire between women in English literature has been portrayed, from schoolgirls and vampires to runaway wives, from cross-dressing knights to contemporary murder stories. Donoghue looks at the work of those writers who have addressed the “unspeakable subject,” examining whether such desire between women is freakish or omnipresent, holy or evil, heartwarming or ridiculous as she excavates a long-obscured tradition of (inseparable) friendship between women, one that is surprisingly central to our cultural history. Donoghue writes about the half-dozen contrasting girl-girl plots that have been told and retold over the centuries, metamorphosing from generation to generation. What interests the author are the twists and turns of the plots themselves and how these stories have changed—or haven’t—over the centuries, rather than how they reflect their time and society. Donoghue explores the writing of Sade, Diderot, Balzac, Thomas Hardy, H. Rider Haggard, Elizabeth Bowen, and others and the ways in which the woman who desires women has been cast as not quite human, as ghost or vampire. She writes about the ever-present triangle, found in novels and plays from the last three centuries, in which a woman and man compete for the heroine’s love . . . about how—and why—same-sex attraction is surprisingly ubiquitous in crime fiction, from the work of Wilkie Collins and Dorothy L. Sayers to P. D. James. Finally, Donoghue looks at the plotline that has dominated writings about desire between women since the late nineteenth century: how a woman’s life is turned upside down by the realization that she desires another woman, whether she comes to terms with this discovery privately, “comes out of the closet,” or is publicly “outed.” She shows how this narrative pattern has remained popular and how it has taken many forms, in the works of George Moore, Radclyffe Hall, Patricia Highsmith, and Rita Mae Brown, from case-history-style stories and dramas, in and out of the courtroom, to schoolgirl love stories and rebellious picaresques. A revelation of a centuries-old literary tradition—brilliant, amusing, and until now, deliberately overlooked.

The appearance of Sherlock Holmes in The Strand Magazine in 1891 began a stampede of writers who wanted to emulate, build upon or even satirize Arthur Conan Doyle's work. This book explores the development of detective fiction during the critical period between Conan Doyle's creation of Holmes and the advent of the Golden Age of the detective story during World War I. Both British and American detective writers of the period are surveyed--as well as writers who turned to gentleman burglars and master criminals.

Get a comprehensive guide to this important literary figure and his author. A classic literary character, Sherlock Holmes has fascinated readers for decades -- from his repartee with Dr. Watson and his unparalleled powers of deduction to the settings, themes, and villains of the stories. Now, this friendly guide offers a clear introduction to this beloved figure and his author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, presenting new insight into the detective stories and crime scene analysis that have has made Sherlock Holmes famous. Inside you'll find easy-to-understand yet thorough information on the characters, recurring themes, and locations, and social context of the Sherlock Holmes stories, the relationship of these stories to literature, and the forensics and detective work they feature. You'll also learn about the life of the author. Better understand and enjoy this influential literary character with this plain-English guide. Gain insight on these classic Doyle tales -- from the classic Hound of the Baskervilles to the lesser-known short stories to Holmes stories written by other mystery writers. Explore the appearance of Sherlock Holmes on film, TV, and stage. Examine Holmes today -- from the ever-expanding network of fans worldwide to story locations that fans can visit. It's elementary! Sherlock Holmes For Dummies is an indispensable guide for students and fans alike!