The rise of the detective in early nineteenth-century popular fiction

Heather Worthington

"Heather Worthington's book challenges the traditional account that finds detection before Poe's Dupin and Doyle's Holmes only in Gothic and Newgate novels and some police memoirs. In fact, the popular press, from broadsides to periodicals, is where both the fictional detective and the investigative case-structures developed, in line with major changes in the real discipline of crime fighting. The well-known masters of early crime fiction, including Collins and Dickens, drew on and refined the raw riches of the popular field, found in texts that have rarely been reprinted or even discussed, but which are analysed in depth in this book. The book benefits from extensive archival research and is theoretically informed by Foucault's account of disciplinary power. No study has examined this material in anything like the detail or with the explanatory approach offered here. With full references, comprehensive narrative description and written in an accessible and readable style, The Rise of the Detective in Early Nineteenth-Century Popular Fiction is essential reading for those researching in, studying or just fascinated by crime fiction."--Jacket.