Crime fiction

Newgate Novel to Detective Fiction



Newgate novel, named after a famous London prison,
originated with Newgate Calendar, the stories of its
most notorious inmates published in the 18

th

and 19

th

century



Edward Bulwer-Lytton Paul Clifford (1830) and Eugene
Aram (1832), William Harrison Ainsworth Rookwood
(1834), Charles Dickens Oliver Twist (1837) –
portraying true crime or inspired by real-life cases



in 1840 a French valet Benjamin Courvoisier murdered
his employer Lord William Russell and quoted
Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard (1839) as the inspiration

Newgate novel



the opening
sentence of Bulwer-
Lytton’s Paul
Clifford and the
inspiration for The
Bulwer-Lytton
Fiction Contest
(BLFC)

Paul Clifford



“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain
fell in torrents — except at occasional
intervals, when it was checked by a violent
gust of wind which swept up the streets
(for it is in London that our scene lies),
rattling along the housetops, and fiercely
agitating the scanty flame of the lamps
that struggled against the darkness.”

Newgate novel



“Set the story back in the previous century



open the action with spectacularly foul weather;



introduce a child who is low-born and either an orphan
or as good as one;



have him corrupted into a life of crime; portray several
thieves’ dens and if possible a hideout in a cave;



sprinkle the dialogue with low-life slang;



add a plot twist involving shady doings by the high-
born (usually, unknown to all, a near relation of the
protagonist);”

Newgate novel



“and finish with the central character
managing against all odds to display true
gentlemanliness, marry an heiress, and
reform on or just beforethe last page.” (F.S.
Schwarzbach)

E. A. Poe's C. Auguste Dupin

•“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)
• "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842)
•“The Purloined Letter” (1844)
•told by a nameless narrator
•“ratiocination”
•the mystery of Poe's death
•non-Dupin cryptography story “The Gold-Bug” (1841)

•the Old Testament Book of Daniel - Daniel's inquest into

Susanna's case

A Study in Scarlet (1887)

•In the first Sherlock Holmes story, Doctor Watson

compares Holmes to Dupin, to which Holmes replies:

"No doubt you think you are complimenting me ... In my

opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow... He had some

analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means

such a phenomenon as Poe appears to imagine".

•1842 London police establish detective department

Yellowback

•started in the 1840s to

compete with “penny

dreadfuls”

•Routledge's “Railway

Library' started in 1848

•reprints of hardback (cloth

editions) novels, manuals,

adventure stories,

detective novels

•many Victorian novels have at their heart the

uncovering of a crime, unveiling of a false identity etc.

(Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Great Expectations..)

•Newgate novels celebrated individual freedom,

detective novels subject the self to some objective

social authority (Ronald R. Thomas)

•Dickens's Bleak House (1852) possibly the first English

detective novel (Inspector Bucket, modelled on Charles

Frederick Field, a famous policeman at the time)

Sensation novel and detective
novel



Sensation novel – started with Wilkie Collins’s Woman in White
(1859 – 1860)



other authors of sensation novels – Mary Elizabeth Braddon,
Mrs Henry Wood, Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)



melodramatic and Gothic elements, characters with multiple
identities, shocking subject matter



R. L. Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
(1886)



Wilkie Collins in The Moonstone (1868) introduced Sergeant
Cuff, a highly intelligent detective with great powers of
observation

Detective novel



A. C. Doyle A Study in
Scarlet (1887)



the development of
forensic medicine and
criminology (Bertillon's
system of identifying
criminals etc.)



R. L. Stevenson The
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll
and Mr Hyde (1886)

The Golden Age of the crime novel

•Agatha Christie
•Dorothy L. Sayers
•Margery Allingham
•Cecil Day-Lewis under the pseudonym “Nicholas Blake”
•G. K. Chesterton “Father Brown” series (started in 1911)
•Leading crime writers in the 1930s had their own club

called “The Detection Club”

•morphing into the thriller in the 1930s (John Buchan)
•Why is reading and writing crime novels fashionable?