Abstract
This introductory chapter explains the historical context of the mass publication market and the Anatomy Act and puts these two elements into relationship. The Anatomy Act itself is the subject of a brief textual analysis explaining how it behaved as a literary object; this section clarifies why it is a controversial text and provides tools to navigate the exegesis in subsequent chapters. Finally, the chapter explains the book’s angle, connecting it to previous research on penny bloods, the Anatomy Act, and medical science in popular fiction, and offering a rationale for the selection of the four specimens examined from the penny bloods vast corpus.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsList of Works Cited
Anatomy Act. London: H.M.S.O., 1832.
Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader—A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1957.
Crone, Rosalind. Violent Victorians—Popular Entertainment in Nineteenth Century London. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.
Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Edited by Stephen Charles Gill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Eliot, Simon. ‘From Few and Expensive to Many and Cheap: The British Book Market 1800–1890.’ In A Companion to the History of the Book, edited by Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
Gilbert, Pamela K. ‘Sensation Fiction and the Medical Context.’ In The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction, edited by Andrew Mangham, 182–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Greenwood, James. ‘A Short Way to Newgate.’ In The Wilds of London. London: Chatto and Windus, 1874.
Haywood, Ian. The Revolution in Popular Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Humpherys, Anne, and Louis James, eds. G. W. M. Reynolds—Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Politics, and the Press. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.
Hurren, Elizabeth T. Dying for Victorian Medicine—English Anatomy and Its Trade in the Dead Poor, c. 1834–1929. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
James, Elizabeth, and Helen R. Smith. Penny Dreadfuls and Boy’s Adventures—The Barry Ono Collection of Victorian Popular Literature in the British Library. London: The British Library Board, 1998.
James, Louis. 2008. ‘Rymer, James Malcolm [Pseuds. M.J. Errym, Malcolm J. Merry] (1814–1884), Novelist and Journal Editor.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. November 16, 2015. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-53817.
James, Louis. Fiction for the Working Man 1830–1850—A Study of the Literature Produced for the Working Classes in Early Victorian Urban England. London: Oxford University Press, 1963.
Law, Graham. Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000.
Law, Graham, and Robert L. Patten, ‘The Serial Revolution.’ In The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, edited by David McKitterick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Leavis, Frank Raymond. The Great Tradition—George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad. London: Chatto and Windus, 1948.
Mack, Robert L. The Wonderful and Surprising History of Sweeney Todd—The Life and Times of an Urban Legend. London: Continuum, 2007.
Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor. London: Griffin, Bohn, and Company, 1861.
Moretti, Franco. ‘The Soul and the Harpy.’ In Signs Taken for Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms, 1–41. London: Verso, 1983.
‘Police—Hatton Garden.’ The Times. September 10, 1813, 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13398-014-0173-7.2.
Powell, Sally. ‘Black Markets and Cadaverous Pies: The Corpse, Urban Trade and Industrial Consumption in the Penny Blood.’ In Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation, edited by Andrew Maunder and Grace Moore, 45–58. London: Ashgate, 2004.
‘Report from the Select Committee for Anatomy.’ London, 1828.
Richardson, Ruth. Death, Dissection and the Destitute. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Rosner, Lisa. The Anatomy Murders. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
Rymer, James Malcolm. ‘Popular Writing’. Queen’s Magazine: A Monthly Miscellany of Literature and Art 1 (1842): 99–103.
Rymer, James Malcolm. Varney the Vampyre; or: The Feast of Blood. Edited by Curtis Herr. Crestline, CA: Zittaw Press, 2008.
Sparks, Tabitha. The Doctor in the Victorian Novel. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.
Sutherland, John. The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction. 2nd ed. Harrow: Longman, 2009.
Tally, Robert T., Jr. Spatiality. London: Routledge, 2013.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
Wise, Sarah. The Italian Boy—Murder and Grave-Robbing in 1830s London. Pimlico 20. London: Jonathan Cape, 2004.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gasperini, A. (2019). The Subject Examined: Penny Bloods, the Anatomy Act, and a Common Ground for Analysis. In: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction, Medicine and Anatomy . Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10916-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10916-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-10915-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-10916-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)