Literary critics of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century have looked to the sensation novel, whose success was limited to the 1860s, as a precursor to modern-day genre fiction, especially to the detective novel. P.D. Edwards has even suggested that sensation novels contain elements of early science fiction. Feminist critics have also given this short-lived genre some attention in recent years, remarking upon its subversiveness in foregrounding a criminal woman as a morally ambiguous–and not immoral–central character. Critical readings of both types tend to work from the assumption that the sensation novel enjoyed tremendous market success, but little or no "literary" acclaim during the height of its popularity. A perusal of the literary and popular magazines of the day, however, shows that sensation writing was a highly contested site of literary value even during the 1860s and 1870s. The rhetorical strategies employed in debates between literary critics and other interested parties (including prominent clergy) suggest the emergence and consolidation of several competing metaphors for authorship–and specifically authorship of popular fiction–in the late nineteenth century. These notions continue to inform the debates around canon formation and literary value that persist today.
This page provides quotations from and comments about nineteenth-century journal articles dealing with sensation fiction.
