Social Criticism in Arthur Conan Doyle's <em>The Poison Belt</em>: Cataclysm as Contemporary British Tableau

Abstract

This article argues that Arthur Conan Doyle’s second Professor Challenger novel, The Poison Belt (1913) uses a disaster narrative structure as a means of offering a tableau of contemporary Britain for the purposes of socio-cultural assessment and burgeoning spiritualist exploration. A conservative text, The Poison Belt uses its science fictional premise to establish a ‘condition of England’ critique informed by Victorian anxieties of social degeneration before offering a wish fulfilment conclusion of cultural re-invigoration