Citation

Radford A. Lit. Compass 2008; 5(6): 1179-1196.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00582.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This essay traces the principal currents in scholarship on Victorian detective fiction over the last century. Starting with a survey of the key critical perspectives established in the first half of the twentieth century, it moves into a more detailed discussion of prominent trends since the turn of the millennium. It suggests a number of directions in which future work might go and draws attention to the Victorian detective narrative's diversity in terms of form and subject matter, indicating that the genre is not as straightforward to label as it first seems. Charting lines of influence between distinctive theoretical and historical approaches to this genre reveals key scholarly trends and areas of recurrent formal and thematic interest in detective fiction studies. Through the discussion of these interlinking approaches I will argue that recent critical modes afford a productive new language with which to comprehend this immensely popular genre. Each grappling in various ways with the problem of how to locate and specify this genre, commentators address the detective narrative as, for example, a cryptic commentary on the nature of discipline; an expose of imperialism and its discontents; and as a fraught reaction to the teeming profusion of the modern metropolis.