Abstract
The 1850s, in the canonical crime tradition, is an interregnum between Poe and the Sensation novels of Wilkie Collins in the 1860s, apart from Dickens’ Bleak House (1852–3), with its Inspector Bucket. Closer examination shows an unbroken continuity in crime fiction during this decade. Moreover, it was spreading: the first Italian detective fiction appeared, with Francesco Matriani’s The Blind Woman from Sorrento (1852) and Emilio De Marchi’s The Priest’s Hat (1858); and the first Spanish, Antonio de Alarcon’s ‘The Nail’ (1853). These writers and others consolidated the emergent genre, their markets ranging across class.
‘I’m a thief-taker, young lady’
Colin Hazlewood, The Mother’s Dying Child 17
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© 2010 Lucy Sussex
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Sussex, L. (2010). ‘I’m a Thief-Taker, Young Lady’. In: Women Writers and Detectives in Nineteenth-Century Crime Fiction. Crime Files Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230289406_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230289406_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-32311-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28940-6
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