Download or read book Miss Or Mrs The Haunted Hotel The Guilty River written by Wilkie Collins and published by Oxford Paperbacks. This book was released on 2008-12-11 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collins's ability to construct a gripping situation and to create an atmosphere of mystery and menace is fully evident in the three novellas reprinted here. All proceed through a series of dramatic scenes to a climax that in one case at least is literally explosive. Varied in setting and tone, these stories demonstrate Collins's plot-making skill at its most succinct and intricate. This is the only one-volume edition to contain all three novellas and the only edition to provide critical apparatus.
Download or read book A Miss Or Mrs written by Wilkie Collins and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-06-21 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) is best known as the innovator of the English detective novel, whose sensational novels, plays, and short stories were hugely popular in the Victorian Era. Today, readers enjoy Collins' intricate and suspenseful plots, and his penetrating social commentary on the plight of women and domestic issues of the time. Unfortunately Collins suffered from rheumatic gout, for which he took the opiate laudanum, and which eventually led to paranoid delusions and the deterioration of his health. This collection of novellas, although varied in style and plotline, is a wonderful example of some of Wilkie's later work, as it became increasingly laden with social commentary. "Miss or Mrs.'" is a fast-paced story of malice, blackmail, marriage and fraud; "The Haunted Hotel" is perhaps Collins' last lucid work, its eerie and suspenseful story influenced heavily by Collins' severe opium addiction; and "The Guilty River" is the psychological and violent tale of two men in love with the same woman.
Download or read book Wilkie Collins in Context written by William Baker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays by international scholars celebrates the 200th anniversary of Wilkie Collins's birth by exploring his unconventional life alongside his works, critical responses to his writings and their afterlife, and the literary and cultural contexts which shaped his fiction. Topics discussed include gender, science and medicine, music, law, race and empire, media adaptations, neo-Victorianism, disability, and ethics. Along with an analysis of his novels, the essays included also recognize the importance of his short stories, journalism, and contributions to Victorian theatre, most notably illuminating the strong connections between sensation fiction and melodrama, as well as exploring his influence on film and TV. Engaging with yet also delving far beyond the famous novels, this volume promotes awareness of Collins' remarkable and diverse writerly achievements and paints a vivid portrait of an author whose fluctuating reputation among contemporary critics stands in stark contrast to his immense and still-enduring popularity.
Download or read book Creating character written by Helena Ifill and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-28 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the ways in which the two leading sensation authors of the 1860s, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins, engaged with nineteenth-century ideas about personality formation and the extent to which it can be influenced either by the subject or by others. Innovative readings of seven sensation novels explore how they employ and challenge Victorian theories of heredity, degeneration, inherent constitution, education, upbringing and social circumstance. Far from presenting a reductive depiction of ‘nature’ versus ‘nurture’, Braddon and Collins show the creation of character to be a complex interplay of internal and external factors. Drawing on material ranging from medical textbooks, to sociological treatises, to popular periodicals, Creating character shows how sensation authors situated themselves at the intersections of established and developing, conservative and radical, learned and sensationalist thought about how identity could be made and modified.
Download or read book Giants of the Past written by Lisa Hopkins and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the ways in which the idea of evolution has been used in popular fiction, focusing mainly on novels of the Victorian and Edwardian periods but also including a closing section on Steven Spielberg's first two Jurassic Park films. The book's overall argument is that in many of these texts the version of origins proffered by Darwinian theory is suggestively played off against both the version of human origins offered by Milton (and, the book suggests, implicitly supported by Shakespeare) and the version of national origins offered by Virgil and by the myth of Brutus, legendary grandson of Aeneas and supposed first founder of Britain. Nevertheless, although these novels tend to give such prominence to alternatives to Darwinian theory, they are also very ready to draw on any aspects of it which will lend support to their own agendas, especially when it comes to drawing sharp distinctions between races and sexes. Although Darwinian theory posed challenges to contemporary orthodoxies and pieties, it could thus also be used in the support of some of them.
Download or read book The Secrets of Law written by Austin Sarat and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secrets of Law explores the ways law both traffics in and regulates secrecy. Taking a close look at the opacity built into legal and governance processes, it explores the ways law produces zones of secrecy, the relation between secrecy and justice, and how we understand the inscrutability of law's processes. The first half of the work examines the role of secrecy in contemporary political and legal practices—including the question of transparency in democratic processes during the Bush Administration, the principle of public justice in England's response to the war on terror, and the evidentiary law of spousal privilege. The second half of the book explores legal, literary, and filmic representations of secrets in law, focusing on how knowledge about particular cases and crimes is often rendered opaque to those attempting to access and decode the information. Those invested in transparency must ultimately cultivate a capacity to read between the lines, decode the illegible, and acknowledge both the virtues and dangers of the unknowable.
Download or read book Anglo American Travelers and the Hotel Experience in Nineteenth Century Literature written by Monika M Elbert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-24 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the hotel experience of Anglo-American travelers in the nineteenth century from the viewpoint of literary and cultural studies as well as spatiality theory. Focusing on the social and imaginary space of the hotel in fiction, periodicals, diaries, and travel accounts, the essays shed new light on nineteenth-century notions of travel writing. Analyzing the liminal space of the hotel affords a new way of understanding the freedoms and restrictions felt by travelers from different social classes and nations. As an environment that forced travelers to reimagine themselves or their cultural backgrounds, the hotel could provide exhilarating moments of self-discovery or dangerous feelings of alienation. It could prove liberating to the tourist seeking an escape from prescribed gender roles or social class constructs. The book addresses changing notions of nationality, social class, and gender in a variety of expansive or oppressive hotel milieu: in the private space of the hotel room and in the public spaces (foyers, parlors, dining areas). Sections address topics including nationalism and imperialism; the mundane vs. the supernatural; comfort and capitalist excess; assignations, trysts, and memorable encounters in hotels; and women’s travels. The book also offers a brief history of inns and hotels of the time period, emphasizing how hotels play a large role in literary texts, where they frequently reflect order and disorder in a personal and/or national context. This collection will appeal to scholars in literature, travel writing, history, cultural studies, and transnational studies, and to those with interest in travel and tourism, hospitality, and domesticity.
Download or read book East Lynne written by Ellen Wood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-05-08 with total page 695 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Looks at the anxieties of the Victorian middle classes who feared a breakdown of the social order as divorce became more readily available and promiscuity threatened the sanctity of the family, [and wherein] the simple act of hiring a governess raises the spectres of murder, disguise, and adultery"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The British Short Story written by Emma Liggins and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The short story remains a crucial - if neglected - part of British literary heritage. This accessible and up-to-date critical overview maps out the main strands and figures that shaped the British short story and novella from the 1850s to the present. It offers new readings of both classic and forgotten texts in a clear, jargon-free way.
Download or read book Charles Dickens and the Properties of Fiction written by Ushashi Dasgupta and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-20 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Dickens was nineteen years old, he wrote a poem for Maria Beadnell, the young woman he wished to marry. The poem imagined Maria as a welcoming landlady offering lodgings to let. Almost forty years later, Dickens died, leaving his final novel unfinished - in its last scene, another landlady sets breakfast down for her enigmatic lodger. These kinds of characters are everywhere in Dickens's writing. Charles Dickens and the Properties of Fiction: The Lodger World explores the significance of tenancy in his fiction. In nineteenth century Britain the vast majority of people rented, rather than owned, their homes. Instead of keeping to themselves, they shared space - renting, lodging, taking lodgers in, or simply living side-by-side in a crowded modern city. Charles Dickens explored both the chaos and the unexpected harmony to be found in rented spaces, the loneliness and sociability, the interactions between cohabitants, the complex gender dynamics at play, and the relationship between space and money. Charles Dickens and the Properties of Fiction demonstrates that a cosy, secluded home life was beyond the reach of most Victorian Londoners, and considers Dickens's nuanced conception of domesticity. Tenancy maintained an enduring hold upon his imagination, giving him new stories to tell and offering him a set of models to think about authorship. He celebrated the fact that unassuming houses brim with narrative potential: comedies, romances, and detective plots take place behind their doors. Charles Dickens and the Properties of Fiction: The Lodger World wedges these doors open.
Download or read book Wilkie Collins Authors in Context written by Lyn Pykett and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-29 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lyn Pykett offers a lively exploration of the novels of Wilkie Collins, author of the first recognised detective novel.
Download or read book The Invention of Murder written by Judith Flanders and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Superb... Flanders's convincing and smart synthesis of the evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life cause célèbres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction alike." -Publishers Weekly, starred review In this fascinating exploration of murder in nineteenth century England, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction Murder in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama-even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other-the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell. In this meticulously researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder in Great Britain, both famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus, to Burke and Hare's bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London's East End. Through these stories of murder-from the brutal to the pathetic-Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted portrait of Victorian society in Great Britain. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.
Download or read book Ghostland written by Colin Dickey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of NPR’s Great Reads of 2016 “A lively assemblage and smart analysis of dozens of haunting stories…absorbing…[and] intellectually intriguing.” —The New York Times Book Review From the author of The Unidentified, an intellectual feast for fans of offbeat history that takes readers on a road trip through some of the country’s most infamously haunted places—and deep into the dark side of our history. Colin Dickey is on the trail of America’s ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and “zombie homes,” Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places. Some have established reputations as “the most haunted mansion in America,” or “the most haunted prison”; others, like the haunted Indian burial grounds in West Virginia, evoke memories from the past our collective nation tries to forget. With boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living—how do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted? Paying attention not only to the true facts behind a ghost story, but also to the ways in which changes to those facts are made—and why those changes are made—Dickey paints a version of American history left out of the textbooks, one of things left undone, crimes left unsolved. Spellbinding, scary, and wickedly insightful, Ghostland discovers the past we’re most afraid to speak of aloud in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.
Download or read book Fuel written by Heidi C. M. Scott and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-12 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Fuel: An Ecocritical History is the first book to chart our changing attitudes to fuel and energy through the literature and culture of the modern era, focusing on the 18th-century to the present. Reading a wide range of writers from Blake, Austen and Dickens to Upton Sinclair and Edward Abbey, Heidi Scott explores how our move from a pre-industrial reliance on biomass and elemental energy sources to our current dependence on the fossil fuels of coal, oil and natural gas have fundamentally shaped human identity and culture. The book's Anthropocene perspective reshapes our view of energy history and climate change, and Fuel looks forward to ways in which we can reimagine our culture away from the fossil fuel paradigm towards a more sustainable energy future driven by renewable, elemental energy.
Download or read book Reality s Dark Light written by Maria K. Bachman and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the midst of a Victorian culture ingrained with strict social etiquette and societal norms, Wilkie Collins composed novels that contained asocial, even anarchic, impulses. A contemporary of Dickens, Collins creates a world more Kafkaesque than Dickensian, a world populated by doppelgangers, secret selves, oddballs, and grotesques. The essays of Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins purposefully work to expand Collins's legacy beyond The Woman in White and The Moonstone; they move well past the simplistic view of Collins's works as "sensation novels," "detective novels," or even "popular fiction," all labels that carry with them pejorative connotations. This collection represents the range of Collins's aesthetic project from various critical perspectives. New methodological and theoretical approaches are applied both to him most popular and to his lesser-known works, giving the reader a broader picture of this multifaceted and undervalued writer The Editors: Maria K. Bachman in an assistant professor of English at Coastal Carolina University. Her articles have appeared in Victorian Newsletter, Literature and Psychology, The Dickensian, and Dickens Studies Annual. Don Richard Cox is a professor of English and associate dean at the University of Tennessee. His books include Sexuality andVictorian Literature (Tennessee), Arthur Conan Doyle, and Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood: An Annotated Bibliography. He is the coeditor, with Maria Bachman, of an edition of Wilkie Collins's final novel, Blind Love
Download or read book Transgression written by Julian Wolfreys and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2008-09-26 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Julian Wolfreys introduces students to the central concept of transgression, showing how to interpret the concept from a number of theoretical standpoints. He demonstrates how texts from different cultural and historical periods can be read to examine the workings of 'transgression' and the way in which it has changed over time.
Download or read book Riverbank and Seashore in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century British Literature written by Gillian Mary Hanson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2005-11-03 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The waters of river and sea represent a kind of freedom, a liberty which, as Iris Murdoch writes, enables man "to exist sanely without fear and to perceive what is real." As settings in fiction, the riverbank and seashore are rich in potential, offering a sense of destiny and suggesting the possibility of self-truth and self-knowledge. In British literature, the rural costal setting-shadowed by cliffs, tugged by the constant movement of the sea--becomes the site of revelation and generates the energy that brings characters to a new level of self-awareness. The river's embankments, bridges and tunnels often mark specific stages of revelation and movement in plot. Entrapment and isolation, contingency and communication are themes that seem born of such settings. This book examines the ways in which 21 modern and postmodern writers (from Tennyson to Ted Hughes, from Jane Austen to Jane Gardam) have made use of the physical environment of riverbank and seashore in their work. It considers how each author employs the physical settings in the service of plot and character development, and how those settings are used to connect with some of the major intellectual concerns of the late19th and 20th centuries. Appendices offer significant quotations from the texts under discussion, arranged according to the location they describe: the rural river, the urban river, river into sea, the rural shore, and the urban shore.
