Detecting the nation
Subtitle: fictions of detection and the imperial venture.
By: Caroline Reitz.
Series: Victorian critical interventions
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Columbus
Language: eng
Number of pages: 123
Subjects: Detective and mystery stories, English -- History and criticism.; English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Imperialism in literature.; Colonies in literature.; Police in literature.; Great Britain -- Colonies -- In literature.
Description: In Detecting the Nation Reitz argues that detective fiction was essential both to public acceptance of the newly organized police force in early Victorian Britain and to acclimating the population to the larger venture of the British Empire. In doing so, Reitz challenges literary-historical assumptions that detective fiction is a minor domestic genre that reinforces a distinction between metropolitan center and imperial periphery. Rather, Reitz argues, nineteenth-century detective fiction helped transform the concept of an island kingdom into that of a sprawling empire; detective fiction placed imperialism at the center of English identity by recasting what had been the suspiciously un-English figure of the turn-of-the-century detective as the very embodiment of both English principles and imperial authority. She supports this claim through reading such masters of the genre as Godwin, Dickens, Collins, and Doyle in relation to narratives of crime and empire such as James Mill's History of British India, narratives about Thuggee, and selected writings of Kipling and Buchan. Reitz also shows how detective fiction and writings more specifically related to the imperial project, such as political tracts and adventure stories, were inextricably interrelated during this time. --Back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-118) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : imperial detection; title: Bad cop/good cop : Godwin, Mill, and the imperial origins of the English detective; title: Thuggee and the "discovery" of the English detective; title: Making an English virtue of necessity : Dickens and Collins bring it home; title: Separated at birth : Doyle, Kipling, and the partition of English detective fiction; title: Conclusion.