Deadly Encounters Two Victorian Sensations Richard D. Altick "Altick's book vividly preserves an important and fascinating element of daily Victorian life. As such, it is the best sort of historical scholarship: the kind that puts us in close touch with a lost world and with people very much like ourselves."--"Smithsonian" "An engaging study in historical sociology."--"Washington Post" In July 1861 London newspapers excitedly reported two violent crimes, both the stuff of sensational fiction. One involved a retired army major, his beautiful mistress and her illegitimate child, blackmail and murder. In the other, a French nobleman was accused of trying to kill his son in order to claim the young man's inheritance. The press covered both cases with thoroughness and enthusiasm, narrating events in a style worthy of a popular novelist, and including lengthy passages of testimony. Not only did they report rumor as well as what seemed to be fact, they speculated about the credibility of witnesses, assessed character, and decided guilt. The public was enthralled. Richard D. Altick demonstrates that these two cases, as they were presented in the British press, set the tone for the Victorian "age of sensation." The fascination with crime, passion, and suspense has a long history, but it was in the 1860s that this fascination became the vogue in England. Altick shows that these crimes provided literary prototypes and authenticated extraordinary passion and incident in fiction with the "shock of actuality." While most sensational melodramas and novels were by lesser writers, authors of the stature of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Trollope, Hardy, and Wilkie Collins were also influenced by the spirit of the age and incorporated sensational elements in their work. Richard D. Altick is Regents Professor of English, Emeritus, at Ohio State University. He is the author of many other books, among them "Victorian Studies in Scarlet"; "Victorian People and Ideas"; "The Shows of London, A Panoramic History, 1600-1862"; and "Paintings from Books: Art and Literature in Britain 1760-1900." 2000 176 pages 6 x 9 17 illus. World Rights Cultural Studies, History, Literature Short copy: An evocative retelling ot two sensational crimes that rocked Victorian London.

For interested readers who have other vocational plans, its authors-experienced researchers themselves-provide an intimate view of the way professional scholars go about their specialized and challenging tasks.

This extensively revised Fourth Edition takes full account of recent developments that have virtually revolutionized certain important areas of the discipline. The computer, as newly written pages demonstrate, not only has eliminated much of the drudgery formerly associated with the gathering, storage, and retrieval of raw data but has made possible many analytical and lexical operations that had been beyond human capacity, yet without diminishing the amount of sheer brain work still required to produce a genuine contribution to knowledge. The book also suggests that "traditional" literary studies, freshly evaluated, are compatible with the current emphasis on critical theory, not inimical to it.

The ongoing revision of the literary canon under the impact of women's studies, African-American studies, and other movements, as well as the intensified scholarly and critical interest in present-day writers, is reflected in the book's hundreds of illustrative examples, extensive lists of several related books and articles, and hands-on exercises. The exercises range from the simple, short answer type that offer practice in the use of secondary materials such as can be found in any college library, to projects that may occupy a number of weeks of research in primary sources and are geared to the extensive holdings of large university libraries.

The basic rationale and structure of the book, having proved themselves in previous editions, remain unchanged. The first half outlines the principles underlying the critical examination of evidence and describes in detail the chief branches of literary inquiry. Further chapters offer practical advice on bibliographical procedure and note-taking, particularly as these are made more efficient by electronic aids, and on the writing of scholarly papers (in one of the best discussions of the craft of expository prose t be found in any textbook); guide the student through the great American and British libraries whose stocks of books and manuscripts are indispensable to original literary research; and reviews the rewards, obligations, and ethics of the profession.

In the first chapters, Mr. Altick examines the Victorian delight in murder as a social phenomenon. The remainder of the book is constructed around classic murder cases that afford a vivid perspective on the way people lived--and died--in the Age of Victoria. From the beginning of the age, homicide was a national entertainment. Penny broadsheets hawked in the streets highlighted the most gruesome features of crimes; newspapers recounted the most minute details, from the discovery of the body to the execution of the criminal. Real-life murders were quickly adapted for the gaslight melodrama and the bestselling novels of the "Newgate" and "sensation" schools. Murder scenes and celebrities were the most popular exhibits at Madame Tussaud's waxworks and in the touring peepshows and marionette entertainments. Murder, in fact, was a crimson thread running through the whole fabric of Victorian life. By tracing this thread in "not too solemn a spirit," Mr. Altick has written a book that will delight and inform all who are interested in social history, as well as that great number who relish true murder stories.