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The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture exposes, explores, and examines what Victorians once considered flagrant breaches of decorum. Infringements that were fantasized through artforms or were actually committed exceeded entertaining parlor gossip; once in print they were condemned as socially contaminative but were also consumed as delightfully sensational. Written by scholars in diverse disciplines, this volume:
- Demonstrates that spreading scandals seemed to have been one of the most entertaining sources of activities but were also normative efforts made by the Victorians to ensure conformity of decorum.
- Provides a broad spectrum of infractions that were considered scandalous to the Victorians.
- Identifies Victorian transgressions that made the news and that may still shock modern readers.
- Covers a gamut of moral infractions and transgressions either practiced, rumored, or fantasized in art forms.
This handbook is an invaluable resource about Victorian literature, art, and culture which challenges its readers to ponder perplexing questions about how and why some scandals were perpetrated and propagated in the nineteenth century while others were not, and what the controversies reveal about the human condition that persists beyond Victoria's reign of propriety.
List of contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Let's Talk Scandal
Brenda Ayres
Part 1: Scandalous Victoriana
Chapter 1: The Afterlives of Victorian Scandals
Lesley A. Hall
Chapter 2: "Her only fear is convention":
The Bohemian Girl in Victorian Art and Life
Anne Anderson, Bohemians in Paris, Anglo-Bohemia
Chapter 3: Reading Between the Lines:
"Town Jottings" from the Savage Club in the Brighton Guardian, 1877
Catherine Layton
Chapter 4: Scandalous Stupor:
Chloroform and Robbery in Victorian Periodicals
Ashlee Simon
Chapter 5: Suicide as Scandal:
Representations from Victorian Life and Art
Catherine J. Golden
Chapter 6: Scandalous Women Wearing Cloaks of Religion
Brenda Ayres
Chapter 7: The Darwin Scandal
Tony Schwab
Part 2: Scandalous Parties
Chapter 8: Victorian Atheists: Cultivating Scandal as a Way of Life
David Nash
Chapter 9: Scandals in a Religious Sect: Agapemone
Catherine Layton
Chapter 10: "A Scandalous and Painful Case": Marriage, Libel, and the Church, 1873-1895
Ginger Frost
Chapter 11: The Cause Célèbre of the Year, If Not the Decade:
May, Dowager Duchess of Sutherland
Catherine Layton
Chapter 12: Regina v. Dunn:
Lady Angela Burdett-Coutts and the Irish Annoyance
Daniel Stuart
Chapter 13: A Poor Gamble:
The Disastrous Elopement of the "Pocket Venus" (Lady Florence Paget)
Catherine Layton
Chapter 14: A "Voice from the Grave":
Lady Flora Hastings, Queen Victoria, and the Scandal of Pregnancy
Suzanne Daly
Chapter 15: Poisonous Words:
Criminal Rhetoric and the Trials of Mary Ann Cotton and Florence Maybrick
Katherine Anne Gilbert and Cheryl Blake Price
Chapter 16: "I am a woman all alone": The Case of Mrs. Manning
Catherine Layton
Chapter 17: Lady Lincoln and the Lesser Life of the 1850 Lincoln Divorce
Gail Savage
Chapter 18: Women in the Military and Their Heraldry in the Press
Claire Cookson-Hills
Chapter 19: Virtue v. Heroism:
Kate Dickinson's Case Against Colonel Valentine Baker
Catherine Layton
Chapter 20: Monstrous Martyrdom:
The Trials of Oscar Wilde
Tom Ue and Aaron Eames
Part 3: Scandalous Reading and Delightfully Despicable Novels
Chapter 21: Edith Cooper's Sin:
Mapping the Wilful Bodies of Michael Field
Sharon Bickle
Chapter 22: "Let us adore spilled blood":
Swinburne and the Scandal of Poems and Ballads
Michael Craske
Chapter 23: Edith J. Simcox and the Scandal of Queer Form
Kellie Holzer
Chapter 24: Scandalous Exogamy in Anthony Trollope's The Prime Minister
Lauren Cameron
Chapter 25: Ouida: Her Scandalous Life and Scandalous Novels
Catherine Layton
Chapter 26: The Scandalous Deconstruction of Victorian Morals in Anna Lombard:
What Made Victoria(ns) Cross?
Purna Banerjee
Chapter 27: Daddy's Little Angel in the House:
The Managing Daughter and the Incest Taboo
Emily Dotson
Chapter 28: The Nineteenth-Century Sex Worker: Avoiding Surveillance, Stereotypes, and Scandal
Hollie Geary-Jones
Chapter 29: Sexy Dirt: Homosexual Scandal and Late-Victorian Social Reform
S. Brooke Cameron
Chapter 30: A Confusion of Discourses: Scandal and Degeneracy at the Fin de Siècle
Sarah E. Maier
Index
About the author
Brenda Ayres is retired from full-time residential teaching but currently teaches nineteenth-century English literature and professional writing online for several universities.
Sarah E. Maier is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of New Brunswick.
Summary
This handbook is an invaluable resource about Victorian literature, art, and culture which challenges its readers to ponder perplexing questions about how and why some scandals were perpetrated and propagated in the nineteenth century while others were not, and what the controversies reveal about the human condition.
