The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s

by Winifred Hughes

Once a controversial genre of Victorian fiction that produced the major best sellers of its century, the now-forgotten sensation novel was a publishing phenomenon in its time. In a vivid portrait of this subversive and discomfiting popular literature, Winifred Hughes identifies its ingredients, its practitioners, and its implications, and reveals its significance both for the mid-Victorian consciousness and for the writers and readers of today.



Originally published in 1981.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Genres: Reference, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this approachable academic analysis of the nature, origins and impact of the Sensation Novels of the 1860s, Winifred Hughes examines the primary works of Charles Reade, E.M. Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood and Wilkie Collins in detail, before making a strong case to show how the spirit of the Sensation Novels continued in a much more literary vein in the works of Thomas Hardy.

She sees their roots in the Gothic novels of the late eighteenth century, the romances of Sir Walter Scott and the Newgate Novels of the 1830s. However, whilst Gothic novels had the elements of romance, adultery and murder which Sensation Novels would appropriate, they lacked a contemporary context. The fact that Sensation Novels were not set in a medieval Italian castle but in middle-class England gave them a thrill and immediacy that was all the more shocking. Newgate novels were contemporary, but they dealt with a criminal underclass whose activities might as well have been as distant as Scott's warring clans to their readership.

She examines the nature of the criticism levied against Sensation Novels, much of which was for the way in which adultery, bigamy and murder was apparently condoned by the authors.Underlying this was a sense that books such as these were democratising the novel, bridging the gap between the penny-dreadful and serious literature and offering dubious moral examples to readers of the lower classes, just as characters such as Aurora Floyd or Magdalen Vanstone move with apparent ease between social classes. Equally, Sensation Novels threatened to usurp the traditional role of the Woman within Victorian literature.Rather than being the emotional lynchpin of traditional melodrama (or - in an area not explored by Hughes - the fulcrum and motive force around which all Women's literature from Jane Austen through the Brontes to Elizabeth Gaskell revolves), women become for the first time forces of moral ambiguity (in the case of Lady Isabel Vane) or evil (as per Lydia Gwilt).

Hughes locates in Wilkie Collins the Sensation Novel's key place as the transitional form between early Victorian romance and melodrama and its successors in twentieth century thrillers and detective novels. In tightly-plotted but essentially open constructions such as The Woman in White and Armadale, characters are still subject to external supernatural forces such as dreams, fate and coincidence. Collins' great insight was to enclose the construction of The Moonstone by making it a mystery to be solved. By limiting the scope, Collins reduces the dependence on the supernatural and thus transforms the melodrama into a form that is suited to the emerging materialistic society. The runaway success of detective fiction as a genre in the twentieth century validates this choice. In this respect, Hughes' highly perceptive coda on Thomas Hardy recognises his work represents a return to a more traditional melodrama, but one that takes place in a universe stripped of moral absolutes. As such it represents the bridge from the Sensation Novel to the literary nihilism of the Twentieth Century

Extracted from my Blog http://roderick-random.blogspot.com/2...

[Kali · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.”

[Kin Cosner · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite on the Sensation novel.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Using it as research for a novel I'm writing.

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

An accomplished early (1980) overview of the sensation genre. Hughes establishes much of the "received wisdom" about sensation today.