The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective

Author(s): Lodge, Sara,
Binding: Hardback,
Date of Publication: 24/09/2024,
Pagination: 384 pages, 41 b-w illus., 1 map, 1 fig.,
Series: N/A,
Imprint: Yale University Press,
Published By: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS ,
Book Classification: United Kingdom, Great Britain
Dimensions: 242 x 164 x 35mm
Weight: 602g
ISBN13\EAN\SKU: 9780300277883

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A revelatory history of the women who brought Victorian criminals to account—and how they became a cultural sensation   From Wilkie Collins to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the traditional image of the Victorian detective is male. Few people realise that women detectives successfully investigated Victorian Britain, working both with the police and for private agencies, which they sometimes managed themselves.

  Sara Lodge recovers these forgotten women’s lives. She also reveals the sensational role played by the fantasy female detective in Victorian melodrama and popular fiction, enthralling a public who relished the spectacle of a cross-dressing, fist-swinging heroine who got the better of love rats, burglars, and murderers alike.

  How did the morally ambiguous work of real women detectives, sometimes paid to betray their fellow women, compare with the exploits of their fictional counterparts, who always save the day Lodge’s book takes us into the murky underworld of Victorian society on both sides of the Atlantic, revealing the female detective as both an unacknowledged labourer and a feminist icon.