During the
1860s and 1870s, the literary genre called sensation novels gained popularity
in England. The genre combined elements from melodramatic novels (with themes
of proving a moral universe existed) and Newgate novels (crime biographies
popular in the 1830s-1840s). The industrialization of the book making process
created books of good quality in greater numbers, which led to a huge increase
in the number of readers. Because the sensation novel combined realism and
romance, two elements previously considered to be in opposition, the title
appealed to a wide audience.
Another
societal event that influenced these stories was increased recordkeeping, which
included proof of identity. Almost always present in a sensation novel was the
question of the permanence or establishment of identity. In British society,
loss of identity (or status) was a shared anxiety. These novels, often labeled as
a novel-with-a-secret, capitalized on that fear by including provocative events
of questionable wills, forged documents, secret marriages, and illegitimate
offspring. Two examples of the questioning of identity are: The Woman in White (1859-60) by Wilkie
Collins and Lady Audley’s Secret (1862)
by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. These two novels, as well as East Lynne by Ellen Wood, are credited as the titles that launched
the genre. (Free copies of these novels can be found on Amazon or Google’s
Gutenberg Project)
All of these
elements coexisted with events of normal Victorian society. Authors of this
genre often used police reports printed in newspapers as inspiration, although
the plots did not center on the solving of the crime but how the crime affected
the characters. Shocking events like bigamy, adultery, theft, forgery, seduction,
and murder were often included. One of the attractions of the sensation novel
was that readers were getting a peek at the secrets behind the veil of an
upstanding family and were titillated (their senses were aroused) about what
was revealed.
When the
books were published, they became immediate bestsellers. The fact they were panned
by high-brow critics made them even more sought-after because of the illicit
nature. One critic at the time, Henry Longueville Mansel, writing in the Quarterly described the novels as “extremely
provocative of that sensation in the palate and throat which is a premonitory
symptom of nausea.” See the similarity with how the romance genre has been treated for
decades?
My next release, A Match for Althia, includes a heroine who loves reading sensation novels and thinks she wants to write one, only to discover her life has been too genteel to know her subject matter.
