Repackaging the Sensation Novel: Neo-Victorian Young Adult Fiction

Abstract

Despite the increased presence of children’s and Young Adult (YA) fiction in both literary scholarship and university syllabuses, and an increasing number of YA titles employing a Victorian setting, neo-Victorian scholarship to date has paid relatively little attention to YA fiction. This chapter offers a critical assessment of the emerging genre of neo-Victorian YA writing in relation to its engagement with the nineteenth-century sensation novel. It considers the manner in which contemporary YA writers employ the themes, characteristics, and tropes of Victorian sensation fiction and contends that the earlier form can be read as an example of nineteenth-century YA fiction. An examination of neo-Victorian YA fiction to date, its relationship to sensation fiction, and its role in the contemporary literary marketplace is followed by a detailed analysis of two-key neo-sensation YA novels: Philip Pullman’s The Ruby in the Smoke (1985) and Mary Hooper’s Fallen Grace (2010).