The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime by
Move over, Holmes, the ladies have arrived! It is the late Victorian era and society is both entranced by and fearful of that suspicious character known as the New Woman. She rides new- fangled bicycles and doesn't like to be told what to do. And, in crime fiction, female detectives such as Loveday Brooke and Dorcas Dene are out there shadowing suspects, crawling through secret passages, fingerprinting corpses, and sometimes committing a lesser crime in order to solve a murder. Michael Sims, editor of The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime, has brought together some of the era's great crime-fighting females in a classic collection of suspense and charm. PRAISE FOR THE PENGUIN BOOK OF GASLIGHT CRIME- 'Excellent . . . The crimes are ingenious, and there are diamonds aplenty.' -Los Angeles Times 'Fun to read and evokes a bygone period of crime fiction . . . One can only hope for a sequel.' - Library Journal 'A genius cover design . . . Brilliantly edited by Michael Sims.' - NewYorker.com
The Dead Witness by
Gathering the finest adventures among private and police detectives from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-including a wide range of overlooked gems-Michael Sims showcases the writers who ever since have inspired the field of detective fiction. From luminaries Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Bret Harte, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle to the forgotten author who helped inspire Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" to a surprising range of talented female authors and detectives,The Dead Witnessoffers mystery surprises from every direction. The 1866 title story, by Australian writer Mary Fortune, is the first known detective story by a woman, a suspenseful clue-strewn manhunt in the Outback. Pioneer writers Anna Katharine Green and C. L. Pirkis take you from high society New York to bustling London, introducing colorful detectives such as Violet Strange and Loveday Brooke. In another forgotten classic, November Joe, the Canadian half-Native backwoods detective who stars in Hesketh Prichard's "The Crime at Big Tree Portage," demonstrates that Sherlockian attention to detail works as well in the woods as in the city. Holmes himself is here, too, of course-not in another reprint of an already well-known story, but in the first two chapters ofA Study in Scarlet, the first Holmes case, in which the great man meets and dazzles Watson. Introduced by Michael Sims's insightful overview of detective fiction,The Dead Witnessunfolds the irresistible antecedents of what would mature into the most popular genre of the twentieth century.
To distribute the amount of reading you will do before our first week of class sessions, read and take notes on the following short stories, novel, and background texts ahead of the course start date. In reading/viewing and taking notes on the stories, novel and TV episodes, attend to and reflect on how space and place function as integral to (and even as a character in) the narrative, how they function as far more than mere setting.
Please view/listen and take notes on the use of space and place in the following television series episodes and podcast before the semester begins to ensure optimal streaming conditions. All three tv episodes wll be available as streaming video in your Carmen course page; if you want to get started, you can find them through popular streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix or by ordering DVDs through the Columbus Metropolitan Library.
Cluedo and Cadavers: British Detective Fiction lecture by Peter Kemp as part of Crime Fiction Day at St John's College, University of Oxford (2012)
Lewis, Series 2, Episode 5, "And The Moonbeams Kiss the Sea"
Endeavour, Series 2, Episode 7, "Nocturne"
Whitechapel, Season 1, Episode 1
Sherlock, Series 2, Episode 3, "The Reichenbach Fall"
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