In 1898, The Strand Magazine, one of the most influential publications of the Victorian fin de siècle, deemed best-selling author and editor L.T. Meade a literary “celebrity” and “one of the most industrious writers of modern fiction.” Beginning in 1893 and continuing into the first decade of the twentieth century, Meade’s medical mysteries and thrilling tales of dangerous criminal women appeared in The Strand. There they competed successfully not only with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, but also with the works of the most popular writers of the day. The Sorceress of the Strand is one of Meade’s most compelling mysteries, and the first to feature the seductive criminal genius Madame Sara. The Sorceress of the Strand is accompanied in this edition by three other popular stories featuring powerful female criminal protagonists, from gang leaders to spies and terrorists. The historical appendices expand on the stories’ themes of criminality, gender, and political activism. Twenty-eight of the original periodical illustrations are included.
In 1898, The Strand Magazine, one of the most influential publications of the Victorian fin de siècle, deemed best-selling author and editor L.T. Meade a literary “celebrity” and “one of the most industrious writers of modern fiction.” Beginning in 1893 and continuing into the first decade of the twentieth century, Meade’s medical mysteries and thrilling tales of dangerous criminal women appeared in The Strand. There they competed successfully not only with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, but also with the works of the most popular writers of the day. The Sorceress of the Strand is one of Meade’s most compelling mysteries, and the first to feature the seductive criminal genius Madame Sara. The Sorceress of the Strand is accompanied in this edition by three other popular stories featuring powerful female criminal protagonists, from gang leaders to spies and terrorists. The historical appendices expand on the stories’ themes of criminality, gender, and political activism. Twenty-eight of the original periodical illustrations are included.
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!
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 examines the developments in British serial detective fiction which took place in the seven years when Sherlock Holmes was dead. In December 1893, at the height of Sherlock’s popularity with the Strand Magazine’s worldwide readership, Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his detective. At the time, he firmly believed that Holmes would not be resurrected. This book introduces and showcases a range of Sherlock’s most fascinating successors, exploring the ways in which a huge range of popular magazines and newspapers clamoured to ensnare Sherlock’s bereft fans. The book’s case-study format examines a range of detective series-- created by L.T. Meade; C.L. Pirkis; Arthur Morrison; Fergus Hume; Richard Marsh; Kate and Vernon Hesketh-Prichard— that filled the pages of a variety of periodicals, from plush monthly magazines to cheap newspapers, in the years while Sherlock was dead. Readers will be introduced to an array of detectives—professional and amateur, male and female, old and young; among them a pawn-shop worker, a scientist, a British aristocrat, a ghost-hunter. The study of these series shows that there was life after Sherlock and proves that there is much to learn about the development of the detective genre from the successors to Sherlock Holmes. “In this brilliant, incisive study of late Victorian detective fiction, Clarke emphatically shows us there is life beyond Sherlock Holmes. Rich in contextual detail and with her customary eye for the intricacies of publishing history, Clarke’s wonderfully accessible book brings to the fore a collection of hitherto neglected writers simultaneously made possible but pushed to the margins by Conan Doyle’s most famous creation.” — Andrew Pepper,, Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature, Queen's University, Belfast Professor Clarke's superb new book, British Detective : The Successors to Sherlock Holmes, is required reading for anyone interested in Victorian crime and detective fiction. Building on her award-winning first monograph, Late-Victorian Crime Fiction in the Shadows of Sherlock, Dr. Clarke further explores the history of serial detective fiction published after the "death" of Conan Doyle's famous detective in 1893. This is a path-breaking book that advances scholarship in the field of late-Victorian detective fiction while at the same time introducing non-specialist readers to a treasure trove of stories that indeed rival the Sherlock Holmes series in their ability to puzzle and entertain the most discerning reader. — Alexis Easley, Professor of English, University of St.Paul, Minnesota
What do tales of stalking vampires, restless Egyptian mummies, foreign master criminals, barbarian Eastern hordes and stomping Prussian soldiers have in common? As Gothic Invasions explains, they may all be seen as instances of invasion fiction, a paranoid fin-de-siècle popular literary phenomenon that responded to prevalent societal fears of the invasion of Britain by an array of hostile foreign forces in the period before the First World War. Gothic Invasions traces the roots of invasion anxiety to concerns about the downside of Britain’s continuing imperial expansion: fears of growing inter-European rivalry and colonial wars and rebellion. It explores how these fears circulated across the British empire and were expressed in fictional narratives drawing strongly upon and reciprocally transforming the conventions and themes of gothic writing. Gothic Invasions enhances our understanding of the interchange between popular culture and politics at this crucial historical juncture, and demonstrates the instrumentality of the ever-versatile and politically-charged gothic mode in this process.
This volume presents a selection from the American and British fiction of the nineteenth century which was evolving into what we now know as science fiction. Taking Frankenstein as its formative work, it assembles stories and excerpts from narratives exploring the complex impact of new technologies like the telegraph and later the cinema, or new scientific practices like mesmerism (hypnotism) and microscopy. The selected authors range from those famous within the realist tradition like George Eliot and Mark Twain to scientists like the physician Silas Weir Mitchell and the inventor Thomas Edison. They repeatedly destabilize their narratives so that some come to resemble scientific records and frequently leave their endings unresolved, encouraging the reader to speculate about their subjects, which include extensions to the senses, new inventions, and challenges to individual autonomy. Many focus on experiments but might combine scientific enquiry with the supernatural, producing hybrid narratives as a result which are difficult to classify.
This title was first published in 1999 & examines the range of detective literature produced between 1901 and 1915 in Britain, during the reign of Edward VII and the early reign of George V. The book assesses the literature as cultural history, with a focus on issues such as legal reform, marital reform, surveillance, Germanophobia, masculinity/femininity, the "best-seller", the arms race, international diplomacy and the concept of "popular" literature. The work also addresses specific issues related to the relationship of law to literature, such as: the law in literature; the law as literature, the role of literature in surveillance and policing; the interpretation of legal issues by literature; the degree to which literature describes and interprets law; the description of legal processes in detective literature; and the connections between detective literature and cultural practices and transitions.
