The Sensation Novel and the Victorian Family Magazine by Deborah Wynne (review)

Abstract

TES, 34, 2004 309 The Victorian Governess Novelis a worthwhile contribution to a growing body of work on a significantnineteenth-centurysubject.The 'governessquestion'achieved its highest prominence from the I84os through the i86os, but it did not fade completely away until the new century made the position itself obsolete. Lecaros contextualizes and analyses this provocative figure from multiple perspectives,and thus significantlyclarifieswhy the Victorian governessbecame such a fraughtsite of the period's culturaldiscourse. ST FRANCISXAVIER UNIVERSITY RICHARD NEMESVARI The Sensation Noveland the Victorian FamilyMagazine.By DEBORAH WYNNE.Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. 2001. x + 202 pp. ?40. ISBN:0-333-77666-6. Over the past two decades there has been increasingscholarlyinterestin the impact of periodicalpublishingupon literature.There can be few Victorianistswho would now deny the importanceof serialpublicationto the development of the nineteenth century novel. Recent studies include Victorian Publishing and Mrs Gaskell'sWork by Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund (Charlottesvilleand London: University Press of Virginia, i999) and Serializing Fictionin the Victorian Pressby Graham Law (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000). Deborah Wynne's book aims, via a series of case studies of popular novels by Collins, Dickens, Wood, Braddon, and Reade, which were serialized in 'family magazines' in the i86os, to investigate the interaction between the sensation genre and individualperiodicals. The focus upon intertextuality,exploring connections between instalmentsof the sensation novels and the articles and stories that surround them, can be fruitful. Wynne's discussion of individual novels is often stimulating. GreatExpectations, contextualized by other fiction characterizedas 'anxiety stories', makes feasible a contemporary reading of Dickens's novel as 'containing an anxious questioning about the implicationsof biological degeneracy'(p. 87).The themes of 'nerves'and insanity, and their contested causes, diagnoses and treatments, themes which pervade TheWoman in White,are seen, in the context of contiguous articleson similar topics and on the 'gentlemanly'crimes of 'self-helpers',forgery and embezzlement , to be part of the periodical's wider cultural debate on contemporary worries.Wilkie Collins'sNoNameis similarlyilluminatedby surroundingarticleson female 'outsiders'. A subsidiaryaim of Wynne's book is to reassessDickens's editorial success with All The YearRoundin comparison with HouseholdWords(pp. 27-28). Dickens's editorial strategiesin promoting a discourseof sensationalismacrossgenres in All TheYear Round undoubtedlymake this magazine a particularlyattractivesubjectfor Wynne's approach. On the other hand, given the constraintsof space, there is a tension between a detailed study of one paper and the broader analysis of how 'family magazines' enmeshed serial sensation fiction within a miscellany of journalism, poetry, and short stories, thus encouraging debate around disturbing social concerns. Of the seven novels chosen, four appeared in All TheYear Round. Apart from those already mentioned, Wynne considers,for contrast, the failure of Reade's highly controversial Veqy HardCashto balance violent dramawith soothing domesticity,a concoction readers of serial sensation fiction apparentlyfound so pleasurable. TES, 34, 2004 309 The Victorian Governess Novelis a worthwhile contribution to a growing body of work on a significantnineteenth-centurysubject.The 'governessquestion'achieved its highest prominence from the I84os through the i86os, but it did not fade completely away until the new century made the position itself obsolete. Lecaros contextualizes and analyses this provocative figure from multiple perspectives,and thus significantlyclarifieswhy the Victorian governessbecame such a fraughtsite of the period's culturaldiscourse. ST FRANCISXAVIER UNIVERSITY RICHARD NEMESVARI The Sensation Noveland the Victorian FamilyMagazine.By DEBORAH WYNNE.Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. 2001. x + 202 pp. ?40. ISBN:0-333-77666-6. Over the past two decades there has been increasingscholarlyinterestin the impact of periodicalpublishingupon literature.There can be few Victorianistswho would now deny the importanceof serialpublicationto the development of the nineteenth century novel. Recent studies include Victorian Publishing and Mrs Gaskell'sWork by Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund (Charlottesvilleand London: University Press of Virginia, i999) and Serializing Fictionin the Victorian Pressby Graham Law (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000). Deborah Wynne's book aims, via a series of case studies of popular novels by Collins, Dickens, Wood, Braddon, and Reade, which were serialized in 'family magazines' in the i86os, to investigate the interaction between the sensation genre and individualperiodicals. The focus upon intertextuality,exploring connections between instalmentsof the sensation novels and the articles and stories that surround them, can be fruitful. Wynne's discussion of individual novels is often stimulating...