The Ambivalent Detective in Victorian Sensation Novels : Dickens, Braddon, and Collins (Paperback)

Introduction: The ambivalent detective in Victorian sensation novels

1 Historical contexts: Police reform, marriage, empire, and the periodical press

2 Early detectives in Dickens’s Household Words stories and Martin Chuzzlewit

3 The detective as villain and hero in Dickens’s Bleak House

4 Detectives of the late 1850s and early 1860s: Russell, Collins, and Wood

5 Early detectives in Braddon’s The Trail of the Serpent and The Black Band

6 Between gentleman and detective: Masculine negotiations in Lady Audley’s Secret

7 Oriental mystique and spying servants in Braddon’s Aurora Floyd

8 Female detectives: Ware (Forrester), Hayward, and Collins’s The Law and the Lady

9 From ambivalence to rationality: Detection in Collins’s Armadale and The Moonstone

10 After sensation novels: Imperial themes and detectives in Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Doyle’s stories

Coda