Baby steps Book

Sensation Novels have largely been forgotten; Winifred Hughes’ 1980 book Maniac in the Cellar is one of the few studies of the genre. And Hughes’ is a very intelligent study, analyzing its writers, its audience, and the ingredients of plot, character, and atmosphere that made the Victorian Sensation Novel such a publishing phenomenon in its day. Hughes discusses Victorian expectations of fiction; explores the works of Charles Reade, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs. Henry Wood, and Wilkie Collins; shows how novels that came before the Victorian era contributed to the rise of the sensational; and discusses the novels that came after the Sensation Novel. Yes, Maniac in the Cellar is an older text, written in 1980 by a professor and therefore is a little dry and scholarly at times, but Hughes’ book is still the best resource to learn more about the Sensation Novel in its Victorian era context. It’s an excellent explanation of why, for the Victorians, “a book without a murder, a divorce, a seduction, or a bigamy, is not apparently considered worth either writing or reading; and a mystery and a secret are the chief qualifications of the modern novel.”