Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction

Download or read book Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction written by Christopher Pittard and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concentrating on works by authors such as Fergus Hume, Grant Allen, L.T. Meade and Marie Belloc Lowndes, Pittard explores the complex relation between the emergence of detective fiction in the 1880s and 1890s and the concept of purity. Situating his discussion within the context of Victorian periodicals, advertisements, medical explorations of criminality and social protest movements, Pittard challenges histories of fin-de-si cle detective fiction that have obscured the heterogeneity of this popular form."