Victorian Crime Fiction

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  The Dead Alive

  In this 1874 novella by Wilkie Collins, the celebrated British writer of sensation fiction tells the tale of two brothers sentenced to be executed for…

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  The Sorceress of the Strand and Other Stories

  In 1898, The Strand Magazine, one of the most influential publications of the Victorian fin de siècle, deemed best-selling author and editor L.T. Meade a…

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  Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Third Edition

  First published in 1886 as a “shilling shocker,” Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde takes the basic struggle between good and evil and adds to the…

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  A Child of the Jago

  “Learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing. … Do your devilmost … for the Jago’s…

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  The Sign of Four

  Arthur Conan Doyle’s second Sherlock Holmes novel is both a detective story and an imperial romance. Ostensibly the story of Mary Morstan, a beautiful young…

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  Jack Sheppard

  In London Labour and the London Poor (1861) Henry Mayhew wrote, “Of all books, perhaps none has ever had so baneful effect upon the young…

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  The Woman in White

  As the inscription on his tombstone reveals, Wilkie Collins wanted to be remembered as the “author of The Woman in White,” for it was this…

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  The Hound of the Baskervilles

  The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–02) is Arthur Conan Doyle’s most celebrated Sherlock Holmes adventure. At the end of the yew tree path of his…

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  Lady Audley’s Secret

  Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) was one of the most widely read novels in the Victorian period. The novel exemplifies “sensation fiction” in featuring a beautiful…

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  The Moonstone

  Intrigue, investigations, thievery, drugs and murder all make an appearance in Collins’s classic who-done-it, The Moonstone. Published in serial form in 1868, it was inspired…