Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England

New as Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-5099-0498-3
Verlag: Hart Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 160 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 236 g

The Victorians worried about many things, prominent among their worries being the 'condition' of England and the 'question' of its women. Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England revisits these particular anxieties, concentrating more closely upon four 'crimes' which generated especial concern amongst contemporaries: adultery, bigamy, infanticide and prostitution. Each engaged questions of sexuality and its regulation, legal, moral and cultural, for which reason each attracted the considerable interest not just of lawyers and parliamentarians, but also novelists and poets and perhaps most importantly those who, in ever-larger numbers, liked to pass their leisure hours reading about sex and crime. Alongside statutes such as the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act and the 1864 Contagious Diseases Act, Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England contemplates those texts which shaped Victorian attitudes towards England's 'condition' and the 'question' of its women: the novels of Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot, the works of sensationalists such as Ellen Wood and Mary Braddon, and the poetry of Gabriel and Christina Rossetti. Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian
England is a richly contextual commentary on a critical period in the evolution of modern legal and cultural attitudes to the relation of crime, sexuality and the family.

Review
'Ward successfully provides a legal and legislative context to texts that both shaped and reflected the Victorian psyche. this book would be an excellent addition to an academic library as it has broad appeal to those studying law, literature, history, and gender studies'.
Alexia Loumankis, Canadian Law Library Review

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ward, Ian

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtsgeschichte, Recht der Antike
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Dark Shapes
Angels in the House

At Home with the Dombeys

The Disease of Reading

Pleasing and Teaching

1 Criminal Conversations

One Person in Law

Newcome v Lord Highgate

Carlyle v Carlyle

Oh Reader!

2 Fashionable Crimes

The Sensational Moment

Fashionable Crimes

Mrs Mellish's Marriages

The Shame of Miss Braddon

3 Unnatural Mothers

The Precious Quality of Truthfulness

Hardwicke's Children

R v Sorrel

The Lost and the Saved

4 Fallen Angels

Walking the Streets

The Murder of Nancy Sikes

Contemplating Jenny

Because Men Made the Laws

Über Autor(innen)

Ward, Ian
Ian Ward is Professor of Law at Newcastle University, UK. He is the author of a number of books on law, literature and history including Law and Literature: Possibilities and Perspectives (1995), Shakespeare and the Legal Imagination (1999), The English Constitution: Myths and Realities (2004), Law, Text, Terror (2009) and Law and the Brontes (2011).

Ian Ward is Professor of Law at Newcastle University.