Title: Victorian detective fiction and the nature of evidence
Description: "This study is an original contribution to nineteenth-century literary and cultural studies in its methodology, its subject matter, and its vision of detective fiction. It engages in a form of intellectual paleontology, tracing the genealogy of a genre through a model based on the Origin of Species read as a form of postmodern historiography. It places detective fiction within the context of popular scientific texts by John Pringle Nichol, Robert Chambers, Winwood Reade, and John Tyndall, as well as the writings of Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, and Thomas Huxley. Frank does not treat detective fiction only as the symptom of a prevailing ideology, but investigates it as a genre promoting a secular worldview in a time of competing visions of the universe and the human situation. Such an approach necessitates close readings of scientific and literary texts that, through explicit and implicit allusions to cosmology, philology, geology, paleontology, archaeology, and evolutionary biology, reveal their ultimate seriousness and heterodoxy."--Jacket.
Subjects: American Detective and mystery stories, Characters, English Detective and mystery stories, English fiction, Evidence, Criminal, in literature, Fictional works, Forensic sciences, History, History and criticism, Literature and science, Popular literature, Private investigators in literature, Science in literature, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes (Fictitious character), Doyle, arthur conan, sir, 1859-1930, Dickens, charles, 1812-1870, Poe, edgar allan, 1809-1849, Detective and mystery stories, history and criticism, English fiction, history and criticism, 19th century, Holmes, sherlock (fictitious character), Evidence, criminal
Places: English-speaking countries
People: Arthur Conan Doyle Sir (1859-1930), Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Time periods: 19th century