The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture

The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture

Author: Brenda Ayres

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-01

Total Pages: 491

ISBN-13: 1000782638

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The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture exposes, explores, and examines what Victorians once considered flagrant breaches of decorum. Infringements that were fantasized through artforms or were actually committed exceeded entertaining parlor gossip; once in print they were condemned as socially contaminative but were also consumed as delightfully sensational. Written by scholars in diverse disciplines, this volume: Demonstrates that spreading scandals seemed to have been one of the most entertaining sources of activities but were also normative efforts made by the Victorians to ensure conformity of decorum. Provides a broad spectrum of infractions that were considered scandalous to the Victorians. Identifies Victorian transgressions that made the news and that may still shock modern readers. Covers a gamut of moral infractions and transgressions either practiced, rumored, or fantasized in art forms. This handbook is an invaluable resource about Victorian literature, art, and culture which challenges its readers to ponder perplexing questions about how and why some scandals were perpetrated and propagated in the nineteenth century while others were not, and what the controversies reveal about the human condition that persists beyond Victoria’s reign of propriety.


The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals

The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals

Author: Michelle Morgan

Publisher: Robinson

Published: 2018-04-12

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1472139488

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'Ghoulishly entertaining' Jacqueline Banerjee, Times Literary Supplement 'This is a great book for dipping into . . . the cases themselves are written engagingly and with appealing dramatisation of key events.' Kim Fleet, Crime Review A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era. The tales include murders and violent crimes, but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians. These include the story of a teenage man who married an actress, only to be shipped off to Australia by his disgusted parents; and the Italian ice-cream man who only meant to buy his sweetheart a hat but ended up proposing marriage instead. When he broke it off, his fiancée's father sued him and the story was dubbed the 'Amusing Aberdeen Breach of Promise Case'. Also present is the gruesome story of the murder of Patrick O Connor who was shot in the head and buried under the kitchen flagstones by his lover Maria Manning and her husband, Frederick. The couple's subsequent trial caused a sensation and even author Charles Dickens attended the grisly public hanging. Drawing on a range of sources from university records and Old Bailey transcripts to national and regional newspaper archives, Michelle Morgan's research sheds new light on well-known stories as well as unearthing previously unknown incidents.


Sex Scandal

Sex Scandal

Author: William A. Cohen

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780822318484

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"Never has the Victorian novel appeared so perverse as it does in these pages - and never has its perversity seemed so fundamental to its accomplishment. By viewing this fiction alongside the most alarming public scandals of the day, Cohen exposes both the scandalousness of this literature and its sexiness." "In narratives ranging from Great Expectations to the Boulton and Park sodomy scandal of 1870-71, from Eliot's and Trollope's novels about scandalous women to Oscar Wilde's writing and his trials for homosexuality. Cohen shows how, in each instance, sexuality appears couched in coded terms. He identifies an assortment of cunning narrative techniques used to insinuate sex into Victorian writing, demonstrating that even as such narratives air the scandalous subject, they emphasize its unspeakable nature. Written with an eye toward the sex scandals that still whet the appetites of consumers of news and novels, this work is suggestive about our own modes of imagining sexuality today and how we arrived at them."--BOOK JACKET.


Great Scandals of the Victorians

Great Scandals of the Victorians

Author: Debbie Blake

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2024-07-30

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1399091611

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Great Scandals of the Victorians features a collection of true stories that shocked, outraged, angered or simply amused the Victorians in nineteenth-century Britain. Drawing on a wide variety of original material, seven disreputable stories that dominated the national newspapers for many weeks are explored, including the Great Warwickshire Scandal, a highly publicized divorce case where for the first time in history a Prince of Wales was called to give evidence in court; a ‘baby’ scandal that disrupted Queen Victoria’s court and threatened the monarchy; the sex scandals of the Abode of Love, a mysterious religious cult founded by a defrocked clergyman, Henry James Prince and the sensational trial of Fanny and Stella, two outrageous cross-dressers accused of sodomy. Some scandals, though traumatic for the people involved, produced a positive outcome, such as the scandalous custody battle between Caroline Norton and her husband, which led to the passing of the Custody of Infants Act, granting mothers custody of their children following a divorce, and the case of 13-year-old Eliza Armstrong, sold to a brothel keeper for £5, which caused a major scandal and public outrage, but also led to a change in the law, raising the age of consent from 13 to 16 years.


Wild Romance

Wild Romance

Author: Chloë Schama

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2010-09-06

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1408814722

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In 1852, on a steamer from France to England, nineteen-year-old Theresa Longworth met William Charles Yelverton, a soldier destined to become the Viscount of Avonmore. Their flirtation soon blossomed into a clandestine, epistolary affair, and five years later they married secretly in Edinburgh. Then, that same summer, they married again in Dublin - or did they? Separated by circumstance soon after they were wed, Theresa and Charles would never live together as husband and wife. And when Yelverton married another woman, an abandoned Theresa found herself forced to prove the validity of her marriage. Multiple trials ensued, and the press and the public seized upon the scandal and reported its every detail with relish. Wild Romance is the inspiring tale of a woman who never gave up, and who held on to her ideals of independence, dignity and - despite everything - love.


Victorian Scandals

Victorian Scandals

Author: Kristine Ottesen Garrigan

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13:

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In the popular mind, the word "Victorian" still evokes associations of repression, hypocrisy, and prudery. We persist in thinking that the Victorians were perpetually shocked by everything from minor breaches of domestic decorum to ministry-toppling causes célèbres. In examining various Victorian scandals, some familiar, some more obscure, these essays provide lively discussion and diverse points of view on the context, nature, and function of "scandal" in Victorian society, particularly in terms of gender and class. Topics covered include: - women as both victims and beneficiaries of the Victorian legal establishment, demonstrated through divorce petitions, cases of wrongful confinement, and a highly publicized breach of promise suit - the actress in contemporary pornography - the effects on male hegemony of programs of higher education for women - ambivalent reactions to biographies of Thomas Carlyle and George Eliot and to Julia Margaret Cameron's "ennobled" photographic portraits - the surprising toleration of gambling and infanticide. The afterword examines the diverse responses to scandalous behavior from the perspectives of recent critical theory. Taken as a whole, Victorian Scandals illustrates the pervasive role of the contemporary press in rendering private conduct a subject of public fascination and suggests the need to expand the definitions, functions, and interpretations of "scandal" in Victorian society.


A Proper Scandal

A Proper Scandal

Author: Esther Hatch

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9781524409371

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Grace Sinclair has been callously cast out of her home. Despite the vicar and his wife taking her in years ago, her unsurpassed beauty makes it impossible for her to remain in the vicar's household--with two daughters of their own about to enter Society, the vicar and his wife see Grace as nothing but competition. Thankfully, Grace's estranged Aunt Bell from London has agreed to care for her. But Grace soon learns her situation has just gotten much worse. It takes only a moment's acquaintance for Grace to ascertain that her aunt has married a detestable rake. And Aunt Bell, recognizing the danger of having her lovely niece too near her husband, gives Grace an ultimatum: the young woman has two weeks to find a man to marry, after which she will be turned out. With no experience in the art of attracting a husband, Grace quickly realizes that a worthy suitor might not be so easy to ensnare.--


The Pocket Guide to Royal Scandals

The Pocket Guide to Royal Scandals

Author: Andy K. Hughes

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2012-02-02

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 184468380X

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A must-buy book for everyone interested in history and skeletons in the regal cupboards. Discover fascinating facts about lust, greed, murder, envy and just plain stupidity. Read King Henry VIIIs scurrilous letters to Anne Boleyn (thought he was interested in her mind? Think again). Whilst King Charles II was known as the Merry Monarch and Queen Elizabeth Is nickname, the Virgin Queen was rumored to be a misnomer, there was a darker side to the royal family, including murder and regicide was Queen Victorias son really Jack the Ripper or did her surgeon do it? History will come alive with this fact-filled book.