Victorian detective fiction and the nature of evidence :
[Book]
the scientific investigations of Poe, Dickens, and Doyle /
Lawrence Frank.
New York :
Palgrave Macmillan,
2009.
x, 249 p. :
ill. ;
23 cm.
Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture
Originally published in hardcover in 2003.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 208-240) and index.
Introduction: Contexts -- Edgar Allan Poe -- "The Murders in the Rue Morgue": Edgar Allan Poe's evolutionary reverie -- "The Gold-Bug", hieroglyphics, and the historical imagination -- Charles Dickens -- Bleak house, the nebular hypothesis, and a crisis in narrative -- News from the dead: archaeology, detection and The mystery of Edwin Drood -- Arthur Conan Doyle -- Sherlock Holmes and "The Book of Life" -- Reading the gravel page: Lyell, Darwin and Doyle -- The hound of the Baskervilles, the Man on the Tor, and a metaphor for the mind -- Epilogue: "A retrospection".
0
"Frank investigates an intertextual exchange between nineteenth-century historical disciplines (philology, cosmology, geology, archaeology and evolutionary biology) and the detective fictions of Poe, Dickens, and Doyle. In responding to the writings of figures like Lyell, Darwin and E.B. Taylor, detective fiction initiated a transition from scriptural literalism and a prevailing Natural Theology to a naturalistic, secular worldview. In the process, detective fiction skeptically examined both the evidence such disciplines used and their narrative rendering of the world."--Publisher description.
Dickens, Charles,1812-1870., Bleak House.
Dickens, Charles,1812-1870., Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Doyle, Arthur Conan,1859-1930-- Characters-- Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes, Sherlock.
Poe, Edgar Allan,1809-1849-- Fictional works.
Detective and mystery stories, American-- History and criticism.
Detective and mystery stories, English-- History and criticism.
Evidence, Criminal, in literature.
Forensic sciences-- Great Britain-- History-- 19th century.
Literature and science-- Great Britain-- History-- 19th century.
Popular literature-- English-speaking countries-- History and criticism.